displaced agency
Matthew Crawford, in his book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, writes eloquently about our modern affliction of “displaced agency.” As corporations rush to anticipate our every need and preference, serving up a small selection of market-tested options the instant we require them, we are left with little room to act for ourselves. “We have too few occasions to do anything,” Crawford writes, “because of a certain predetermination of things from afar.” Everything becomes easier, but less satisfying.
Software programmers are taking the displacement of personal agency to a new level. Relentlessly focused on making their programs more “user friendly,” they’re scripting the intimate processes of intellectual inquiry and even social attachment. We follow their scripts when we click on one of Google’s keyword suggestions, and we follow them when we select from a list of categories to describe ourselves and our relationships on Facebook. These choices are convenient, but they’re not our own. They’re generalizations masquerading as personalizations.
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