... I found that the future didn't have anything in store for me, because there are no such things as "the future" or "in store." Now, as every point in history, there are an infinite number of possible outcomes, each determined by the choices we make.
It's not surprising that recommendation systems and frictionless design have caught on, given the way they can strip complexity out of our chaotic, fast-moving lives. And, to reiterate, not all personalized recommendations or frictionless apps are bad. But we have to be careful about giving too much of ourselves to our tools. Because the philosophy that gives rise to machine drift is, fundamentally, nihilism. It's an attempt to persuade us that there is nothing important about us that cannot be quantified or reduced to a series of data points, or any inner life worth protecting from machine influence. Recommendation engines and frictionless products offer us their help, but their ultimate goal is surrender--a swimmer caught in a riptide, who gets tired of fighting the current and simply decides to float.