This fetish of automaticity and disconnection can’t be called a tendency of “technology,” if we insist that the proper standards of technology are simply those of function. Rather, it is the tendency of a peculiar consumer ethic that has embraced Kant’s metaphysics of freedom. Disconnection—pressing a button to make something happen—facilitates an experience of one’s own will as something unconditioned by all those contingencies that intervene between an intention and its realization.
