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Personalized (mobile) devices are radically changing information access tools, with rich context allowing for far more powerful, personalized search. Rather than retrieving a “document” on the topic of a “query,” the rich contextual information allows for tailored search and recommendation, and solve user’s complex tasks by taking into account complex constraints, exploring options, and combining individual answers into a coherent whole. This paper reports on a RuSSIR 2015 course covering the challenges of contextual search and recommendation, with a concrete focus on the venue recommendation task as run as part of TREC 2012–2015. It consisted of both lectures and hands-on “hackathon” sessions with data derived from the TREC task.

Blockchains and the GDPR pursue similar objectives where they seek to grant users greater control over their personal data. While the latter pursues this goal by imposing duties of care to centralised controllers and collectors of data, blockchains go a step beyond by trying to eliminate these stakeholders and the need to trust them. Nevertheless, the rules set out by the GDPR apply whenever personal data are at stake, and various actors of the blockchain ecosystem risk liability for controlling of processing data in violation of privacy requirements. A possible solution is to re-contextualise the concepts of data controlling and responsibility, as framed by the GDPR, in light of blockchains’ enhanced individual autonomy. In this paper, we set the framework for a further inquiry on the role of users as both data subjects and data controllers of distributed ledgers.