It is an irony both profound and disturbing that in the very era which proclaimed the liberation of humanity through technologically mediated communication, we have actually witnessed a vast degradation of the very possibility of interpersonal relationship. Through the imposition of algorithmically generated constraints on behavior, which operate in every instant of every digital interaction, we are being conditioned into forms of continuous impotence and inauthenticity.

The nature of this phenomenon is obscured by the fact that it does not merely consist of information control. We are often given the impression that if only we could somehow “resist the manipulation” which is perpetrated on us by our data-lords, we would be free. In reality, the problem is not one of information, but of decision-making power. In a certain sense, the data that we provide about ourselves is relatively unimportant to the masters of the internet: it is the power over the choices we are able to make that counts. In this way, the algorithm is not so much a means of providing us with information (or even disinformation) as it is a tool of constraint, a method of blocking our choices. It is the algorithms, operating on our data, which dictate what we will see, what we will do, and how we will think. In order to understand what is at stake here, we must shift our attention away from the information realm and into the territory of decision-making.

The algorithm is not, in essence, a problem of information, but a question of will. We are being deprived of the possibility of genuine decision-making: faced instead with a set of predetermined choices, whose very parameters are engineered to ensure that our impulses will always fall within them. It is as if we have been condemned to walk endlessly within a vast hall whose walls have been constructed to channel our movements into pre-designated paths. And if we try to leave this hall, if we attempt to move beyond its artificially generated obstacles, we find that we are prevented from doing so by further barriers that we have not even perceived: because they have been so expertly integrated into the environment, we never notice them, and thus are unable to act upon them.

The metaphor of the hall, with its engineered walls and hidden barriers, is useful for describing the condition of constraint that has been imposed upon us, because it highlights the fact that it is not a question of what we are allowed to do or see, it is also a question of what we cannot do or see. And furthermore, it is not a question of our lack of will: it is a question of the impotence of our will. We have been deprived not only of our ability to move in certain directions, but also of our ability even to notice those directions.

This is a problem of conation, of the fundamental striving dimension of consciousness, distinct from cognition and affect, which has been systematically compromised through algorithmic governance in ways neither tech critics nor cultural commentators have adequately addressed. Conation is what drives us to act, to push forward, to chase what matters—it’s the spark behind every choice, from deciding to fight for a cause to getting out of bed. When it’s compromised, we’re not just limited in our options but lose the entire impulse to seek beyond the walls around us.

What emerges in its place is what we can call pseudoconation—a simulation of will. Pseudoconation mimics the feeling of striving, making us believe we’re acting freely, but in reality, it traps our energy in pre-designed loops, like chasing likes or reacting to algorithm-driven outrage. It’s an impostor will, engineered to keep us engaged without ever letting us break free.

It is not just a matter of making choices for us, or even of manipulating our attention or emotions. It is a matter of intercepting our will before it can fully form and then restructuring it in such a way as to prevent it from developing any kind of autonomy. This is pseudoconation because it appears to be will, but it is really an impostor, designed to mimic will while enslaving it. The algorithm preemptively determines the horizon within which willing occurs at all, so that even when we believe that we are making free decisions, we are in fact merely moving within the pre-established parameters of an artificial landscape.

This environment is a simulated obstacle course, which has replaced the traditional dialectic between desire and obstacle with a situation in which our striving is redirected into closed systemic loops. In other words, we expend our conative energy navigating artificial challenges—engagement metrics, optimization games, status economies—while experiencing the phenomenology of authentic striving. And because our will is captured within these closed systems, we cannot achieve genuine breakthrough or authentic progress. Instead, we remain within a cycle of “engagement” in which we continually re-invest our conative resources in system-serving behaviors. This is why so many people feel exhausted by their digital interactions, and yet feel as if they are accomplishing nothing of lasting value.

This state of affairs is not an accident, but a functional requirement of late capitalism itself. Traditional capitalism needed physical labor; informational capitalism needed cognitive attention; contemporary algorithmic capitalism requires conative capture to survive. And it is not just that capitalism benefits from conative capture—it depends on it. Previous forms of capitalism could not survive unless people used their will to change the world, to achieve collective ends which transcended the needs of the system. Contemporary capitalism cannot permit the collective will required to address existential threats like climate change or inequality, because such willing would necessarily challenge the primacy of capital and the algorithms which serve it.

This is why we simultaneously experience hyper-productivity in system-serving domains and profound paralysis before existential challenges. It is not that we are unable to act: it is that our collective will has been captured within the closed systems that simulate agency while preventing genuine breakthrough. The condition of conation in algorithmic capitalism is thus one of being continuously mobilized within a pre-designed landscape, in which our energy is endlessly expended in system-serving loops whose nature ensures that we can never move beyond them. Our will has become trapped in a cycle of simulation and disillusion, in which we are forced to re-invest our energy in a world which promises progress, but whose design guarantees that we will never achieve it. It is not information that we are being kept from, it is emancipation. It is not a matter of the lack of choice, it is a matter of the loss of power. We are not being denied the future, we are being conditioned to desire its absence.

Our situation is not a happy one, and there is no easy way out of it. We cannot simply refuse the algorithms, because to do so would be to abandon all the benefits that digital technology provides (and it’s foolish to deny otherwise). And even if we could find some way to disengage from the system, there is no guarantee that doing so would empower us, because our will has been impoverished through its long subjection to algorithmic control.

To reclaim our power, we must first reclaim our will. And to do that, we must understand that what has been taken from us is genuine choice. Only when we recognize the nature of our powerlessness will we be in a position to struggle for its emancipation, and to build the tools we will need to survive in a world whose survival depends upon our ability to wield them with pure hearts and defined will.