Personalization can make the Web more manageable and effective. But there ought to be room for serendipity, too. The same could be said for a movie about the Titanic sinking, a Web site for buying and selling household junk or news about a Cuban boy caught in a cross-cultural family dispute. Serendipity is about running into those things and then finding out that you care. Human beings need it.
Society needs it.
Without it, the Italians might have borrowed from the Germans and to this day we'd be going to Italian restaurants and ordering spaetzel and meatballs. Unfortunately, in today's busy world, serendipity doesn't stand much of a chance. It's simply not efficient. It's like taking out a rod and reel and aimlessly casting a line in a stream when you could simply drive to the supermarket to buy the darn fish. Which assumes that the value is in the fish.