Freedom of choice or is it?

[AmericanBuffalo]

I truly love this country and the ideals and principles upon which it was founded. Our ability to have the range of freedom we still have despite it being challenged on nearly all fronts, is quite remarkable. The examples of this are endless and for better or worse it may be one of the remaining attributes of which keeps our ever fragmenting republic from becoming uncivil. However with technology so ever increasing in our day to day lives, whether willingly or not it is hastening how we make choices, having choices, or having choices made for us. Many times without our knowledge or thought but our consent.

I am unsure of what the percentage of people actually read through user agreements for the various tech devices, apps and software they use everyday. I would guess it is quite low. I would guess that because I have read many through the years and in doing so read how I would be agreeing to having information mined from my activities and then presented back to me as suggestions. To put it simply. So I really don't use much tech. Keep it very limited and still realize just by using it I have compromised my freedoms in some ways with agreeing with some of these user agreements. I think there is a conditioning affect from this in people.

I suppose what I am trying to get at is something we will see in the perhaps not too distant future. Where in a sense your mind is already made up for you before you make a choice. You used GrubHub to order from your favorite take out and it has what you ordered last time right there in front. It knows you like it. You ordered it. Probably will order it again.  Many times you won't bother looking for another choice as it has already been made for you and at some level you are good with it. That is the part which disturbs me! Being good with yourself for allowing a choice to be made for you. Maybe it was the right one, maybe not and you can never know because you left yourself out of the equation. You trusted this tech to do it for you. This is merely an example to illustrate a larger looming issue.

At some point this can be effectively used against us by providing another illusory layer to the freedom we perceive. I find it very hard to articulate this notion. Over time we have seen in many ways what we consider freedoms are actually illusions. I still think our forefathers had wisdom and foresight when crafting the US Constitution which has made the illusions to be used becoming quite clever. Perhaps it may have given the average citizen some staying power in the realm of freedom to the present. It remains to be seen how this goes.

I have nothing to link. It is just an opinion based on five plus decades of watching the hamster wheel go around and around.