Choosing to Choose: The Impact of Technology on Choice

Abstract The development of modern technology has increasingly focused on efficiency over expression. Interfaces limit and scale down human choice and expression. Entertainment and communication now use interfaced technology for even basic human expression, artificially limiting the number of potential choices to the options presented by the interface. The logic of technology has become a totalizing phenomenon, bringing all areas of human life under it purview. According to Heidegger, Ellul, and Flusser, the result of this development is a different way of being-in-the-world for humans. The traditional man has been the constant in production and communication, which the medium and technology have been the variable. The modern man has reversed his orientation towards technology, the man is the variable and the machine is the constant. Building machines no longer appears to serve humanity, but instead has become an end in itself. Due to the methods of technology and quantification of nearly every decision, free choice is becoming more and more difficult to comprehend. As a case study for these arguments, The Stanley Parable examines how media can be used to limit possible choices, and can also be used to encourage new forms of play that counteract the predictability of machines and technical communication through human expression and increased computer literacy.