Attention Machines and Future Politics Highlight

Big Tech was the first to invent looms—the first true “external attention system,” I’d argue, was achieved when Google added a quality score mechanism to its AdWords pipeline around 2003. Tech companies used them primarily towards the creation of predictive products—products which use machine learning systems to predict our behaviors, generating data to sell to clients. Their revenue derives from the accuracy of the predictive products they sell. To increase predictive accuracy of any model, you really have two options: improve the model, or simplify the system you are modeling—literally make the system more predictable. This is the ultimate purpose of the small range of gestures, the flattening effect our devices have on our range of behaviors, both cognitively and physically: swiping, staring, dissociative absorption, thumbing, whatever. It is the narrowing of possibility, to make us more predictable.