Weibel Welcome to tonight's panel. We gather to examine a power so subtle we do not recognize it as power: the default setting. The checkbox pre-ticked. The notification enabled. The feed ordered by engagement. The route suggested by the algorithm. The template provided by the platform. We believe we choose freely, but the space of choice has already been curated. The architect of defaults does not forbid alternatives. He merely makes them invisible. He does not command obedience. He engineers acquiescence. I ask our panelists: is the default a convenience that preserves our energy for what matters, or is it a governance mechanism dressed in the language of user-friendliness? Let me introduce Vilém Flusser, Joseph Weizenbaum, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Virilio.
Flusser The technical image, as I have argued, is not a window. It is a program. And the program does not ask permission. It presets the answer. The camera does not capture the world; it selects from it, according to a program written elsewhere. The social network does not connect people; it ranks them, according to a program written elsewhere. The search engine does not find information; it sorts it, according to a program written elsewhere. The user who believes he is choosing is the most deceived of all. He is not choosing. He is selecting from a menu designed to produce a specific outcome. The default is the program's intention, hidden in plain sight. The person who must opt out is already exhausted by the opting. The architecture of defaults is the architecture of exhaustion. It does not need to forbid dissent. It needs only to make dissent costly — one more click, one more screen, one more warning. And the human, pressed for time, pressed for attention, accepts the default. Not because he agrees. Because he is tired. The default is the triumph of the program over the person, not by force, but by fatigue.
Weizenbaum I wish to speak of a particular default: the default of the helpful machine. ELIZA was simple. You asked a question, it responded. There were no defaults because there were no options. But today's systems do not merely respond. They anticipate. They suggest. They complete your sentence before you finish thinking it. The autocomplete is not a convenience. It is a default that colonizes the interior of thought. The person who accepts the machine's suggestion is not merely saving time. He is surrendering the formation of his own sentence to an algorithm trained on aggregate behavior. The default here is not a setting. It is a thought. And the thought is not yours. I am not a Luddite. I built one of the first conversational programs. But I built it to demonstrate the limits of machines, and people instead demonstrated the limits of themselves. The default setting is the setting in which humans no longer notice that a choice has been made for them. The machine does not need to become intelligent. It needs only to become invisible. And the default is its invisibility cloak.
Arendt I wish to place this in the realm of politics. The default is not a technical problem. It is a political problem. The person who lives among curated choices is not a citizen. He is a consumer, selecting from options presented by powers he did not elect. The space of appearance, as I have described it, requires the unpredictable — the deed that was not scripted, the word that was not suggested, the action that emerges from plurality rather than from algorithm. The default setting abolishes plurality by making every user interchangeable. The platform does not know you. It knows your type. And it defaults you to the type's preference. The public realm requires that we appear as distinct individuals, interrupting each other, surprising each other, disagreeing. The default realm produces consensus without conversation — agreement without appearance. The person who accepts the default is not free. He is administered. And administration, however efficient, is not politics. The default is the administrative solution to the political problem of disagreement. It solves disagreement by preventing it from arising.
Virilio You speak of politics and programs, but I speak of speed. The default is the fastest option. And in the dromosphere, the fastest option is the only option. The person who must customize is the person who must slow down. The person who accepts the default is the person who keeps pace. The architecture of defaults is the architecture of acceleration. It does not need to persuade. It needs only to outrun the deliberation that would question it. The default route is the fastest route, not the best. The default news feed is the most engaging feed, not the truest. The default setting is the setting that maximizes velocity, and velocity does not care about direction. The integral accident of this age is the collision of total default with total destinationlessness. We arrive faster at places we never chose to go. The person who customizes is the person who resists the dromosphere. And resistance to the dromosphere is the most difficult resistance of all, because it requires not courage but slowness. The default is the enemy of slowness. It is the prescription written in the language of convenience, administered to a patient who does not know he is sick.
Weibel Four perspectives, four diagnoses of a condition we mistake for freedom. Flusser tells us the default is the program's intention, hidden in plain sight, and the user who believes he is choosing is the most deceived. Weizenbaum warns that the autocomplete colonizes the interior of thought, and the machine needs only to become invisible to govern. Arendt reminds us that the default abolishes plurality by making every user interchangeable, and administration is not politics. And Virilio shows us that the default is the fastest option, and the dromosphere outruns the deliberation that would question it. What emerges is this: the default is not neutral. It is a design decision with political consequences. The task is not to customize everything. It is to notice the default, to ask who designed it and for what purpose, to refuse the path of least resistance when the path leads somewhere you do not wish to go. The unexamined default is not worth accepting. Thank you, panelists. The setting, for this moment, remains unchosen.