Eliminating the Human

I have a theory that much recent tech development and inno-vation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction. This tendency is, I suspect, not a bug--it's a feature. We might think Amazon was about making books available to us that we couldn't find locally--and it was, and what a brilliant idea--but maybe it was also just as much about eliminating human contact. The consumer technology I am talking about doesn't claim or acknowledge that eliminating the need to deal with humans directly is its primary goal, but it is the outcome in a surprising number of cases.