In this position paper, we take the experimental approach of putting algorithms aside, and reflect on what recommenders would be for people if they were not tied to technology. By looking at some of the shortcomings that current recommenders have fallen into and discussing their limitations from a human point of view, we ask the question: if freed from all limitations, what should, and what could, RecSys be? We then turn to the idea that life itself is the best recommender system, and that people themselves are the query. By looking at how life brings people in contact with options that suit their needs or match their preferences, we hope to shed further light on what current RecSys could be doing better. Finally, we look at the forms that RecSys could take in the future. By formulating our vision beyond the reach of usual considerations and current limitations, including business models, algorithms, data sets, and evaluation methodologies, we attempt to arrive at fresh conclusions that may inspire the next steps taken by the community of researchers working on RecSys.

A critical change has occurred in the status of context in recommender systems. In the past, context has been considered 'additional evidence'. This past picture is at odds with many present application domains, where user and item information is scarce. Such domains face continuous cold start conditions and must exploit session rather than user information. In this paper, we describe the `Contextual Turn?: the move towards context-driven recommendation algorithms for which context is critical, rather than additional. We cover application domains, algorithms that promise to address the challenges of context-driven recommendation, and the steps that the community has taken to tackle context-driven problems. Our goal is to point out the commonalities of context-driven problems, and urge the community to address the overarching challenges that context-driven recommendation poses.