I was reading the following article about amazon.com,  Amazon Just Patented Shipping Items Before They’re Even Ordered, and the first sentence really got me thinking:

Late last month, Amazon patented a process they’ve termed “anticipatory package shipping,” in which products would be sent to fulfillment centers near the customers most likely to purchase them, before customers even order them.

I was really struck that my past purchases plus my browsing history, wish lists, and shopping carts (a series of aggregated data) could lead a company to “anticipate” my next purchase. (This isn’t new, but acting on it would be.) I purchase lots of gifts for other people through amazon especially over the holidays and with Amazon prime. It’s one of the reasons their recommendation system doesn’t always work well. The context of the purchases matter.

Now, what would be really cool is for them to tell me what they anticipate my next purchase will be, as it might anticipate something I hadn’t thought about or suggest something I hadn’t thought to gift as well.

Here’s the thing. Amazon.com turns 20 years this year. The online store went live in 2005, and this article got me thinking about my first purchase from amazon.com back in 1996-1997. It was Roald Dahl’s The Witches. I had just finishing my student teaching and was doing substitute teaching in Lafayette, LA. In February of 1997, I took over teaching 6th grade at Lafayette Middle when a teacher left mid-year.. I was planning to do a 5-10 minute read-aloud at the beginning of class, and I chose The Witches. After we finished the book, we watched the movie. (The movie is actually quite horrifying for some 6th graders, and I had parents questioning what I was doing as their children were having nightmares. oops!)

I was curious how far back my purchases on amazon went. It turns out I can go back to my purchases from 1998, when I first began my PhD program, and my oldest niece was 4, and my other niece was 1. The juxtaposition of children’s books and toys with history of rhetoric and literary theory books is a fun reminder of my life back then.