Technology Isn't Delivering on the Magic Anymore
I've been pondering something for a while now, but have held off "thinking out loud" about it because I was worried I might sound like a guy yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. But f*ck it, this is my site, and I think it’s time to air this one out: Technology isn’t delivering on the magic anymore. Instead, it feels like a burden, or worse.
For decades, digital technology delivered magical moments with a regularity that inspired evangelical devotion. For me, the very first of these moments came while using a Macintosh in 1984. Worlds opened up as that cursor tracked my hand’s manipulation of the mouse. Apple’s graphical user interface – later mimicked by Microsoft – was astonishing, captivating, and open ended.
I was a kid in college, but I knew culture, business, and society would never be the same once entrepreneurs, hackers, and dreamers started building on Apple’s innovations. And build they did. From that point onward, the magic continued, sometimes in massive leaps (like the Mac itself), sometimes in smaller ways that built upon those leaps.
My first login at the WELL, an early online service, was another such milestone of the late 1980s. Staying up late talking to strangers and engaging in online forums was like being part of a secret club. It was exhilarating, and it felt like I had agency over my interactions.
Fast forward to today, and I no longer feel that way. In fact, I think the magic has been replaced by a dark art of algorithms and surveillance capitalism. We're so used to having our choices curated for us that we've lost sight of what's truly important: control over our own lives.
The Power and Control of Early Tech
What all these moments of tech magic have in common is the power and control they gave to the average person. Early tech gave us agency over parts of our lives that were previously hobbled by physics and economics.
The Mac gave computers a physical interface. Desktop publishing allowed us to leap over the physical and economic limitations of the printing press. Early online services, then the web itself erased boundaries of geography, information access, and culture. Google, for a brief and wonderful period, helped it all make sense. Services like Tivo and Spotify gave us agency and elasticity over media.
But today, we're sacrificing our agency at the altar of convenience. We're so used to having our choices curated for us that we've lost sight of what's truly important: control over our own lives.
The Dark Side of Algorithms
The magic of tech has been replaced by a dark art of algorithms and surveillance capitalism. We're no longer in control of the information we receive, but rather at the mercy of the algorithm.
Our own agency is being sacrificed for the sake of convenience. We're so used to having our choices curated for us that we've lost sight of what's truly important: making choices for ourselves.
A Fear for the Future
I fear this model – where our own agency has been sacrificed at the altar of convenience – will serve us poorly should artificial intelligence become the next framework for how we engage with computing going forward.
Nearly Everyone In Tech wants generative AI to be The Next Big Thing, proof that tech can, in fact, bring back the ol’ magic of yore. But I'll expand on this idea more in future posts: If we don’t take our agency back when it comes to “the agentic web,” I fear this entire AI revolution will come to naught.