Sarah Morgan
In Gosford Park, the 2011 whodunit that spawned the Downton Abbey franchise, Helen Mirren’s character says the power of a great servant is the gift of anticipation. “I know what they want before they want it themselves,” she says.
What better way to sum up our data-driven online world?
The algorithm, we say now. The algorithm showed me something I now want, a meme that made me laugh, a person I now call a friend.
It’s all anticipation, which, in any context, is just good guessing. Action powered by understanding. Which, I might argue with Mrs. Wilson the housekeeper, is the real gift. You can’t be good at predicting without having – and, importantly, understanding – information. She also says, at another point, “I’m the perfect servant; I have no life.” Her life is subsumed by, and into, the lives of her wealthy employers. She exists to serve: to know them and act on that knowledge.
Today, we think we should be served by the algorithms.
The reality is, though: we serve the algorithms.
Let’s get it right. We aren’t the employers. The wealthy people abovestairs are the same as they’ve always been: the very few ultra-rich.
The servants have been automated. They’re the algorithms. Not as cute as Rosie the robot from the Jetsons, but the same point.
Those new servants harvest money from us for the wealthy.
We’re the crop.
More specifically, our attention is the crop.
Even more specifically, attention that gets us to buy.
Anticipation isn’t always a good thing. We like to think we have free will. We’d like to believe we’re unpredictable, devil-may-care, wild-and-crazy – or, at the very least, that we COULD be, if we wanted to be.
To quote another movie about rich people: “I hate being a foregone conclusion,” Catherine Banning says in “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
We none of us want to be boring or unsurprising. We none of us want to be completely known.
But we do want to be a bit known. It’s lovely to have someone save or prepare your favorite thing.
And anticipation CAN be wonderful. Anticipation is what makes it so great to plan for the future – vacations, home renovations, whatever is exciting to look forward to. As a recent article says, “to enjoy life more, embrace anticipation.”
The difference is power.
It’s delightful to be the one who knows so much that you can anticipate and predict. And it’s delightful to know that your loved ones know you: that you’ve let them in enough that they can anticipate and predict you.
What’s less charming is when your actions are anticipated by forces unknown or unpleasant, for purposes unknown or unpleasant.
You may have anticipated a pithy conclusion here, but I haven’t got one. Sorry to let you down. Non-algorithmic life is like that sometimes.
