In November 2011, I attended a talk at the RIGB titled The Serendipity Engine with Aleks Krotoski and Kat Jungnickel. 

They describe the engine as the following (taken from the website): The Serendipity Engine is a physical manifestation of theoretical and technological interventions that can be used to enhance serendipity on the World Wide Web. It is a working machine that uses bike parts, flower pots, cake, pulleys, lightbulbs and other concrete objects to articulate the processes that could be translated into digital “solutions” that will re-engineer the potential dystopian social trajectories of current (social) software trends*. It is being theorised, devised, designed, developed and welded together by Dr Aleks Krotoski and Dr Katrina Jungnickel.

Brad and I weren’t too sure about this talk, mainly, if you are engineering serendipity, is it really serendipitous anymore? As a metaphor, I didn’t find the engine appropriate. Still, it was an interesting talk and neither of us went looking for answers. I’ve included my sketchnote below.