Agency, Waiting time, Serendipity

WIP Post

Now it is obvious and evident that the cause of our doom is amusement. There are infinite mechanics to engage us in this wormhole of entertainment. YT's autoplay, IGTV, Fleets, live session on reddit, decreasing idle time in games, and so forth. If there were some study to measure serendipitous information acquisition and give out a score, I am sure, pre-internet era would score less on the score. I believe that waiting time and agency are important factors, if not significant ones, in contributing to one's experience of serendipitous information acquisition. It seems that lack of waiting time, has increased the distance between self and what I call as the operator self.Wondering about the exact difference between agency and autonomy

Operator self is the agent that does what self tells it to do. Operator self is not autonomous. It takes in the command from the self which has the agency. Operator self executes and passes on the feedback. Usually, when we use tools (let's say a soldering iron), self instructs the operator self to do as it in a controlled manner. Operator self (unless physically difficult), attempts to execute that instruction and provides feedback. One simply does not solder any arbit thing that comes to mind or hand does not go any where unless instructed. What scripts have done is something interesting. They increase some kind of distance between the self (agency) and the operator self.

The user journey of a social media rabbit hole is something like this:

  1. Open an application. Self and operator self are coupled
  2. Stream of information is visible
  3. Recommender algorithms, personalisation algorithms, clustering algorithms, start working
  4. Operator self slowly separates itself from self /2 2/ deleuzian thought: organ without body. Here, one starts becoming like a delezian machine and stops becoming an organism
  5. Operator self has cognitive abilities, just not agency. So, it operates on own. 
  6. Cognitive limitations kick in, fatigue sets in, but absorption is too damn high. 
  7. Operator is now in anxiety, but feels comfortable with the speed as it has autonomy on it, not on the information. 
  8. Operator operates under the illusion of control. And is stuck in an infinite loop of repetitive actions
  9. Operator finally leaves the self and becomes this wasteland of anxiety and is lost forever.

Here, Self is the mouse pointer you control and operator self is the shadow pointer. Behavior of the cursor is modelled such that it mimics the steps above. To gain back the control(or bring back the operator self closer to self), just click anywhere except the hyperlinks. 


Credits: 

Cursor by iejank from the Noun Project and finger touch by Alvaro Cabrera from the Noun Project. 

Animation modelled with p5js

Another variation here.