I think it was indeed use of GPS that first made me aware of how much the systems we are building are trying to automate me. From the socials to Jira to slack GitHub to crypto to GenAI... it is now painfully obvious that all these systems are pressing upon us to react to stimulus in predictable ways to execute a part of some larger movement which -- probably -- no one has actually designed or considered the purpose of.
I think we are in the third act of a very long play:
> If mechanical thinking and ingenious experiment produced the machine, regimentation gave it a soil to grow in: the social process worked hand in hand with the new ideology and the new technics. Long before the peoples of the Westenr nworld turned to the machine, mechanism as an element in social life had come into existence. Before inventors created engines to take the place of men, the leaders of men had drilled and regimented multitudes of human beings: they had discovered how to reduce men to machines. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_and_Civilization)
I think we are in the third act of a very long play:
> If mechanical thinking and ingenious experiment produced the machine, regimentation gave it a soil to grow in: the social process worked hand in hand with the new ideology and the new technics. Long before the peoples of the Westenr nworld turned to the machine, mechanism as an element in social life had come into existence. Before inventors created engines to take the place of men, the leaders of men had drilled and regimented multitudes of human beings: they had discovered how to reduce men to machines. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_and_Civilization)