Convenience and Ease at the Cost of Freedom?

Algorithm-using technology holds the potential to make our lives more convenient, albeit less free.

Imagine cruising some famous American street—Hollywood Boulevard, Michigan Avenue, Lombard Street. Although you’re in your car, and no one else is accompanying you, you’re not driving. You’re a lone passenger tucked comfortably in the reclined seat of a driverless car. You look out the angular window and spot a ‘57 Ford Thunderbird, or a passel of men dressed handsomely in bowler hats, bulky coats draped over their arms. Or, maybe, up ahead you see a horse-drawn carriage bounding across an intersection.

Such anachronisms might not be far off, at least according to the musings of The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance in the article, “How to Turn Your Self-Driving Car Into a Time Machine.” The piece invites us to consider the entertaining and exhilarating possibilities of a future with driverless cars. Since these automated vehicles would require a robust and extremely sophisticated system for mapping data—the proximity, speed, and size of nearby objects, precise location and destination coordinates, etc.—they could, at least in theory, use such information for the good of entertainment and education: by “combining augmented reality with super-precise location data and real archival video and audio footage (plus a mix of actor reenactments and CGI),” we could recreate the past. In other words, we could drive along a modern street, flip a switch next to the cup holder, and view that same street as it was in the 1950s, or 40s, or 20s.

This would be one of the perks of driverless cars. On the other (less whimsical) hand, the article suggests that such technology could make for “ethereal billboards that appear only to individual car passengers . . . essentially location-specific, ultra-targeted pop-up ads.” Still, while trips redolent of a Disneyland attraction during a work commute may seem far-fetched, digital location-based billboards? Not so much.

This is already part of our everyday lives, only to a less invasive extent. Every time we check social media or navigate the web we’re fed ads that are increasingly relevant to our needs, desires, and interests. By using online behavioral targeting techniques, companies can dish potential customers specific ads by tracking the type of websites they have visited. If I’m reading a blog about the best national parks in the country for camping, then in fairly short order, while visiting another site or checking my newsfeed, I’ll spot—can you believe it?—an ad for a North Face windbreaker jacket just as I was considering trekking to Yosemite. Aside from our online behavior, though, potential customers are being targeted by the massive amount of information they are freely giving up to the incorporeal gods of the internet: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on. Facebook lets brands target their users by accessing the information they provide: age, level of education, job, location, favorite music, gluten-free eater, insatiable dog lover, etc. So when Nancy is online she isn’t just a nameless IP address floating through the web of magic data known as the internet but, rather, a 26-year-old single female living in the greater Chicago area who has a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University Chicago, listens to Kenny Chesney, and shops at Banana Republic and Lululemon.

Some are unsettled by such clandestine advertising techniques. The measures taken by the suspicious go only so far, perhaps resulting in the deactivation of cookies on their web browsers. Yet, there are also pros to such algorithms: they foster convenience. If we have no choice but to endure an onslaught of digital ads whenever we venture onto the internet, then we might as well see ads we’re interested in, even if only tangentially. This is especially the case when such technologies, advanced algorithms designed to anticipate user desires or needs, are used beyond the realm of advertising and marketing. A relatively simple example is Pandora, where depending on the songs a user likes or dislikes, their overall music playlist is altered to suggest new songs that the user will likely enjoy. The technology studies the human user, collecting and storing all retrievable data, and then feeds the user information, content, or entertainment with a good probability of success. When it comes to shopping on Amazon or watching Netflix, this type of user-centered technology seems, at the very least, helpful.

An article by Jim Taylor, a professor at the University of San Francisco, titled, “How Technology is Changing the Way Children Think and Focus,” examines some of the effects—both positive and negative—that recent technology is having on our children. Taylor explains that our newly wired ecosystem, with its vast and endless repository of evergreen content and information, is conditioning children to scan for information quickly and efficiently. Previous generations read static and limited content in the form of books and magazines, which required a deeper level of attention and focused mental activity. As a result, though children today are able to scan information more efficiently than children of the past, they are also living in a world where “distraction is the norm, consistent attention is impossible, imagination is unnecessary, and memory is inhibited.” By not engaging in other forms of mental activity—such as reading a book or solving a puzzle—the muscles that help form critical thinking, reflection, and problem-solving are becoming weakened because they aren’t needed.

The article doesn’t declare that modern children are any less intelligent or capable, rather, that their brains are developing differently due to the varied and rapid stimuli they’re exposed to on a regular basis. If we take this recent trend in cognitive development and introduce these evolving algorithms designed to efficiently supply optimal dating partners in a dating app or highlight related books and movies for purchase on Amazon, then we must wonder what this means for human development and flourishing.

One danger is the weakening of our ability to choose things for ourselves—to choose the people we date and befriend, the news we read, the content we share, the movies we watch, and the ideas we ingest. As Facebook gets more sophisticated, the less likely we are to see political, religious, or cultural “content” that doesn’t appeal to our own sense of preferences, past behaviors, and interests. This type of push-based digital economy could enable us to settle comfortably into a state of inactivity, especially if our brains are being conditioned to ingest content on a superficial level. The more we are spoon-fed content, merchandise, entertainment, information, and the like, the less need we have to actively engage in seeking these things ourselves. If we are bombarded with content that we are—based on past behavior—supposedly interested in, then how can we stumble upon diverse ideas or information that has the potential to shape and transform our outlook, character, and understanding? This can be particularly dangerous when our original interests or behaviors aren’t nurturing, and we are therefore required to wade through perpetually tailored information in order to stumble upon something or someone with the potential to inspire or shape us in new, expansive, and fruitful ways.

Technology in this light borders on the dystopian. To the degree that our ability to make free and informed choices is marred, so too is our dignity as self-directing agents, as creatures, in the words of Thomas Merton, called to expand and develop our own individuality and recognize our responsibility “for the good of others, for their own temporal fulfillment, and ultimately for their eternal salvation.”

There is no doubt this type of algorithm-using technology holds the potential to make our lives better, but it’s worth minding just how much power we defer to such impressive and sophisticated algorithms for the sake of convenience.