You walk back in and ask the butler, “Did someone steal my car?”
“No,” says the butler. “Sir had not driven that particular automobile for several days, so one took the liberty of moving it farther down the street and placing the gardening tools, which sir has been using more frequently of late, closer to the house.”
“Well, that’s fine,” you say, “but it would be more convenient to have the car where I expected it to be. Nevertheless, since I came back in the house anyway, I think I’ll have some tea.” You reach for the Keemun, but pull down Lung Ching instead. Turning to the butler again, you ask the sensible and obvious question.
“Lung Ching was the tea sir drank most recently,” he explains, “so of course one moved it to the front, where it would be easily accessible.”
“Yes,” you try to explain, “but when I reach for a thing, I expect it to be where I expect it, and not in a different place each time. If it’s in a different place each time, I have to go looking for it each time. It costs mental effort. It makes my life harder, not easier.”
But the butler doesn’t see it that way. Every time you reach for something, it’s in a different place. You reach for the toothbrush, and find the soap. You reach for the garden shears, and find the hoe. You reach for your wife, and find your brother-in-law. Everything is constantly moving around, because the butler is always noting what you have used most frequently or most recently and moving that thing to a position he thinks is more accessible.
How long will that butler remain in your employ? Probably no longer than it takes you to write a glowing reference for him to take to the next sucker who hires him.
But your phone and your computer will keep doing exactly the same thing, and you will not fire them. That’s just how they work, you will say. It’s true that you have to go looking every single time for the app you want to launch or the site you want to visit, because things keep shifting around all over the place, but that’s because Google and Microsoft and the rest are determined to make life easier for their users, no matter how much extra work it creates for us.
The ultimate plan, of course, is to make us completely dependent on the choices our minders make for us. Instead of picking the entertainment or information we want, we will pick what the pushers of information want us to look at, because it is less work to do so. If all goes as planned, our entire intellectual life will depend on external direction.
Is this a wicked conspiracy? No; it is worse. It is an unexamined assumption. The people who cause our software and Web sites to take this proactive approach genuinely believe they are making our lives better, and they are so certain that they dismiss the complaints of users as noise from random cranks. They really do believe that we wish not to be burdened with independent thought, so they are not likely to change their ways.
But, speaking as one random crank to a small but select group of random cranks, Dr. Boli would suggest putting a little extra effort into your intellectual life. Do what it takes—install utilities or browser extensions or alternative applications or even whole alternative operating systems—to make sure that you are in control of what you do and what you see on your phone or computer, not Microsoft or Apple or Google. It will be a little extra work, but you will be a happier person. And if enough of us do that, the profit-minded capitalists will take note.