I find these two questions fun to ponder:

1. Given an interstellar space ship with the ability to warp to any coordinate in the universe, how would you decide which planets to visit in the universe?
2. Given a computer with the ability to discover almost any media - film, tv, video, podcast, music - how would you decide what to consume?

The universe of media

The amount of media available to us to consume is effectively infinite. There are xx films released per year and this is only increasing. Despite search engines and AI, choosing what to watch is still difficult; news feeds like Tiktok create echo chambers and promote sensationalist media; Google monotonised the top search results. In short, these coarse grinding machines only produce a kind of homogenous slop, and many things you might enjoy with more individuality ("texture" or "flavour") do not make it through the filter. That's not to say that slop is never fantastic, but that the uncontrollable algorithms we rely on are a kind of cookie cutter.

There are a couple obvious strategies for discovering new media:

1. Scrolling the Netflix home screen
2. Asking AI
3. Finding something popular
4. Asking a human

The first three almost certainly involve you using algorithms. The fourth probably indirectly relies on them, unless your human has some other way of exploring media.

In the interstellar metaphor, these media are the huge galactic space stations and the cities of the Federation; you have to struggle not to find them. The Federation has brutal, stringent requirements for entry; it often conquers and normalises. Occasionally, it propels some distant underdog, a homely system that captures "something different", to stardom. But what about all the brilliant media in between?

The universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, and it's expanding the space between planets. Consider the planets to be media - songs, films etc - you're aware of and might consume, and the space between them to be media you don't really care for.

Moreover, how do we find lonely planets in the void if we're starting on a planet in the Federation? When there are no highways - only instantaneous warp drives between cities - how do you go "off road"?

Coordinates from cosmology

There is another way to discover coordinates for distant planets you might enjoy visiting. I first heard this beautiful metaphor from Blindboy, paraphrased here:

A song is a flower. You stop for a minute, appreciate how it looks and smells, and then carry on your walk, blissfully unaware of the complex system that brought this flower to life. The roots of the flower intertwine with many nearby plants; the fungal networks might tie it to systems tens of metres away; the pollen that made the flower may have traveled kilometres on the breeze; and the seed that birthed the plant may have laid dormant for decades.

When you view the song as only a song, you hear only the melody, the chords, percussion and vocals. But when you view it as art, you hear the genre; you recognise the guitarist's distinctive solo style on the radio; you guess who influenced them. Art is the complex web of influences that created that flower, or perhaps even define it.

Back to the space metaphor. The flower metaphor means that on each planet, if you look hard enough, there are countless data tying it to other planets. Our planet emerged as the accretion of random shit flying through space. Our DNA mutation is driven by particles that came from supernovae explosions distant in space and time.

Our interstellar ship has the ability to create white holes bridging two places in space and time. But with the wonders of cosmology, we can pluck the coordinates of the influences of this planet we're currently enjoying, even if it sits in the homogenous prison of the Federation.

Our computer has the ability to surface basically any media from history before our ears and eyes. By studying the influences of stuff we like - like finding songs through Wikipedia and music journalism - we can surface an infinite of web of more diverse things to experience; we can find media that would never survive the mysterious grinding gears of our algorithms.

Curated coordinates and the invisible warp stations

Armed with cosmological tools, you sample your favourite planets in the Federation and put a quick list together of coordinates to check out. Some planets are exotic, and some feel eerily familiar even though you've never been there. After a little while, you notice a little flag from another traveller that with a hand-scrawled list of coordinates on them. You realise you've been handed a warp station that was invisible before you visited this planet, constructed by someone just like you.

The slumbering loneliness of watching tasteless copies of the same story that your friends haven't bothered to watch begins to fade. In its wake dawns the warm companionship of sharing a planet with other astronauts across space and time. You punch in the first coordinates on a stranger's list, and to your heart's delight, the first shapes you make out through the white hole are the silhouettes of people.