Los Angeles

ALGORITHMS, as you probably know, are the computer programs that infer from your profile (in the case of Facebook) and from the content of your e-mails (in the case of Gmail) your interests and preferences, enabling ads to be displayed to the customers most likely to be interested in specific products. This feature is prized by advertisers and accounts for the multibillion-dollar value of the most successful Web networks.

The algorithms are programmed, I believe, to get to know us better over time, and rather than resent the invasion of privacy I have come to feel a grudging respect for, and even a growing sense of intimacy with, my own personal algorithm. You have to admire, for example, the inventive audacity of a program that would read an e-mail someone sent me about “Holocaust deniers” and think that I might be shopping for a Holistic Dentist.

And when I conceded in an e-mail that something “was cheeky of me ...” I found it rather endearing that the algorithm tried to sell me a New Razor from Gillette ®. I had a similar reaction when a reference to the fine actor Christopher Plummer produced: Get a Plumbing Quote Now. Find a local Plumber.

Of course, these slightly off-base pitches have a certain logic that is easy to discern, revealing, more than anything else, the program’s digital dyslexia.