For private enterprise, the sky is no longer the limit; it is the new commercial superhighway. Due to regulations approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, innumerable drones are set to take flight, programmed to photograph real estate, survey industrial sites and deliver merchandise over short distances—at an altitude no higher than 500 feet and at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. Drones, to judge from Matthew B. Crawford’s “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction,” are just the most recent technological marvel to “disrupt our peace of mind.” From mall Muzak to text messages, pop-ups and robocalls, there is no shortage of claims on our attention. The handrail of an escalator at O’Hare airport, compliments of an investment firm, assures weary travelers, “You’re in Charge.”
We have become “isolated in a fog of choices,” many of them unwelcome, Mr. Crawford writes. A motorcycle mechanic with a Ph.D. in political philosophy and the author of “Shop Class as Soulcraft” (2009), he now turns his attention to the many-headed hydra of mass commercialization. Over the course of 13 loosely connected chapters, he delves into the “intrusions” and “enticements” of daily life, followed by a lengthy discourse on the importance of achieving “an earned independence of judgment.” Digital technology, he fears, has become a particularly potent tool in the hands of private enterprise. Corporations routinely manipulate the shopping preferences of consumers. Such are the capabilities of commercial websites that to contemplate a purchase online is to be nudged days later to seal the deal. Woe to shoppers who do not proceed promptly to the checkout. “Libertarians,” he writes, “have an outdated view of where the threats to freedom lie.”
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