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Find Your Next Favorite Book, Movie, Band, and More with This New Media Recommendation Tool

Are you a bookworm? Film buff? Maybe a band groupie or an art lover? The Global Network of Discovery has it all.

Marla Mackoul|
Your new favorite book is just a click away.
Your new favorite book is just a click away. | luoman/E+ via Getty Images

In a world where doomscrolling Netflix until you can’t keep your eyes open is a common phenomenon, too much choice can feel like an enemy. Recommendations from friends and family can help sort through the never-ending maze of media out there, but sometimes they just don’t get your taste. Or maybe you’re looking for a new book to read and don’t want to broadcast your 50 favorite cheesy romance novels to the world to find one. Either way, there’s a new solution for you: the Global Network of Discovery.

The Global Network of Disovery (or Gnod, for short) is an AI-based project by Germany-based innovator Marek Gibney that, at its core, uses what other people think you might like. Over 300,000 people use Gnod every month, and those users fill out little boxes indicating their favorite authors, movies, bands, and artists. Over time, this teaches the AI what to recommend to people based on their current interests and how they overlap with what other people like. For instance, if you say your favorite authors are Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens, Gnod recommends you check out Edith Wharton; this is because other people who list Wilde, Austen, and/or Dickens also tend to list or confirm that they like Wharton. This “discover” feature can be used to find new artists, authors, movies, and musicians.

The real star of the show, though, is Gnod’s “tourist maps.” These maps are essentially visual representations of Gnod’s data for one specific musician, author, or movie. In a swirling circle of names, media most similar to what you’ve chosen will hover nearby; the farther away from the center you go, the less similar things get.

On the map for the movie Inception, for example, Shutter Island and Interstellar, similarly mind-boggling films, stick close. The Social Network and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, however, hang on the edges as only potential matches. The tourist maps are fun visual tools targeted at those moments when you want something that’s new (or at least new to you), but in the same vein as something you already know and like.

Gnod has thousands of artists and tens of thousands of musicians and authors in its database, and every user makes the network and its maps bigger and smarter. By finding your new obsession, you also help other people find theirs, both tailored to your specific tastes—it’s the ultimate recommendation win-win.

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