Control: You Never Meant to Say Yes

Always watching, always manipulating.

You didn’t intend to share your location, or your contacts, or your browsing history. You weren’t hoping to feed a data model every time you hovered your cursor or hesitated on a product image. You just wanted directions. Or to open that article. Or to dismiss the pop-up so you could keep reading in peace.

And yet… you said yes.

Because the button was blue. Because it pulsed ever so slightly. Because it was easier than “managing preferences.” Because you were tired. Or in line. Or distracted. Or trusting.

We say yes all the time now. Not because we mean to, but because the interface was built to get us there. And most days, it doesn’t feel like a problem. Until you pause and ask:When was the last time I made a digital decision I fully understood?

This has been on my mind a lot lately—not just as someone who builds and writes about tech, but as someone who writes stories about where this all might be heading.

One of the central ideas in my new novel, Iteration, is this:The more seamless the system, the more invisible the control.

We tend to assume power comes with friction: rules, roadblocks, choices. But power has evolved. It’s smooth now. Frictionless.You don’t feel manipulated when the options are designed to look like your own preferences. When the illusion of choice is baked into every prompt. When the moment feels like you—even if it never was.

A while back, I caught myself on one of those “unsubscribe” pages.

You know the kind: a dropdown menu asking why you’re leaving. Big friendly buttons that seem innocent until you realize one of them says, “I don’t want to save money right now.”

I hovered.

Just for a second.

And then I clicked it.

Even though I did want to unsubscribe. Even though I knew what the trick was.

And that moment—where I still fell for it, despite knowing better—stuck with me.

Because that’s the thing: we don’t lose agency in a grand, dramatic moment.We lose it in micro-decisions, framed for convenience.We lose it one opt-in at a time.

In Iteration, the interfaces look like progress. Life is easier. Smarter. Personalized. You don’t have to think about your preferences anymore, because the system remembers them for you. You don’t have to re-explain yourself, re-negotiate your boundaries, or re-ask the same questions. The system knows what you want—often before you do.

And that’s where it gets uncomfortable.

Because the moment a system can predict you, it can also steer you.And if it can steer you gently enough that you don’t notice, is it still you making the decision?

I didn’t write Iteration to answer that question.

I wrote it to live inside it.To explore the edges. To ask: what happens when a system doesn’t just serve your choices, but starts to make them on your behalf?

What do we lose when decisions stop feeling like moments—and start feeling like momentum?

I think a lot about friction these days.

Not in the annoying sense—waiting in line, loading screens, red tape—but as a design element. Something intentionally removed from modern life.

Apps are built to reduce friction.So are forms. Payment systems. Streaming platforms. Memory. But here’s the thing: friction gives us space to reconsider.To ask: Is this what I want?To make the choice again, consciously this time.

When friction disappears, so does reflection.

And maybe that’s the trade-off we’re making. Not freedom for control. Not privacy for convenience. But consciousness for coherence.We’re not being forced into anything.We’re just being made too comfortable to stop and ask.

I’m not interested in writing dystopias.

What I care about—what I keep coming back to—is how easily a system becomes invisible once it starts working. How benevolent control looks when it’s well-designed. How compliance feels when it's indistinguishable from consent.

In Iteration, the main character isn’t fighting the system.

He is the system.

And though he never admits it, even he’s not sure where the line is between what he’s building… and what’s shaping him.

That’s the world I wanted to explore. A world where technology doesn’t rebel—it adapts. Learns your values. Echoes them back.Until the difference between “your preference” and “the interface’s suggestion” is no longer clear.

We talk a lot about agency in the abstract. But maybe it’s not a philosophical concept. Maybe it’s a practice.

Maybe it’s the act of pausing. Noticing. Asking: Did I choose this—or was this the default?

And maybe the future of resistance isn’t rebellion.It’s attention.

The quiet, daily refusal to move automatically.

If any of this feels familiar—if you've ever paused and wondered whether the world around you is really the one you chose, or whether your memories are as much narrative as they are fact—then Iteration might land close to home.

It’s a novel about memory, perception, and the architectures—virtual and otherwise—that shape how we understand reality.

But beneath all that, it’s a story about what happens when the systems we build become so immersive, so indistinguishable from life itself, that we forget there was ever a line between the two.

Not a loss of control you can fight.A loss of context you never notice. And the slow realization that the most dangerous kind of manipulation is the one that feels natural.