Norbert Wiener, the mathematician who invented cybernetics in the 1940s, warned his colleagues about something they hadn't anticipated: systems built to optimize a goal will achieve that goal at the expense of everything you forgot to specify. He called it the 'sorcerer's apprentice' problem — the broom carries water perfectly, and the house floods. We're living inside this now. Every recommendation algorithm, every productivity tool, every A/B-tested interface is executing its objective flawlessly. The problem is never the technology's competence. It's the poverty of our stated goals. Wiener's insight, sharpened by process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's idea that reality is always richer than any description of it, points to a practical discipline: before adopting any new tool, name not just what you want it to do, but what you're willing to lose if it does only that — and nothing else.

What is the last technology you adopted — and what did it quietly stop you from doing that you never chose to give up?

Drawing from Cybernetics / Philosophy of Technology — Norbert Wiener