A society that treats the current ownership of technological power as part of nature has already surrendered the constitutional question. The invisible hand in this debate has a board of directors, a cap table and government contracts. The Economist has mistaken its grip on the wheel for freedom.

individuals will willingly (or, what is far more insidious, without knowingly) surrender their entire intellectual and and experiential life, the sum total of their knowledge, memories, judgment, and emotional history to the machine

it is an enduring, ancient malignancy, a pattern of abuse that merely undergoes periodic rebranding to suit the anxieties and political climate of the time. It is a cycle of moral and institutional failure, one that is periodically embarrassed and momentarily shamed when a spectacular scandal breaks the surface, yet it is rarely, if ever, truly abolished.