deus or dea ex machina

In case you didn't take four years of Latin in high school, the title of this blog post translates to "god or goddess out of the machine." Without googling it, if memory serves right the expression refers to a playwright's trick: to solve a plot dilemma the author injects a solution out of left field, as if a god or goddess had dropped out of the sky to make things right. Something like that. Close enough for my purposes. (I refuse to look it up while writing this. Go ahead. You're sure to look it up now, after this tease.) In this instance, the god or goddess in the machine is the notion of digital commands. I recently signed up with a food-delivery service. I installed an app on my phone and went through the required steps to be a valid delivery person seeking to make a few extra bucks at times of my own choosing. If I put myself on the clock, it makes me available for orders. I digitally inform the molecules or bits or bytes or electronic pulses -- I honestly don't know what -- residing in the app that I'm ready. The app knows where I am by GPS. If I receive a notification of a delivery order, I have 60 seconds to accept or decline the chance to go to the food merchant to pick up the food and then deliver it within a specified time to the person ordering the food and its delivery. A clock image in the upper-right corner of my phone screen starts ticking away the countdown. If I don't accept, someone else gets it. No pressure? Some pressure. Concurrent with this, I receive matching texts from the app. Messages like: "New Order: Go to XYZ (East Moses)." If I get to the food merchant and tarry in the parking lot, I start getting pestered by texts. Where are you? Choices are given, such as "waiting in line," "getting the food," "problem encountered," or "go fuck yourself." Yeah, yeah, I threw that in last one in there. Or if you accept the order and start driving, you might get a text saying something like, "You don't appear to be heading towards the order. Do you need help?" This annoys me because I know damn well where I'm going, thank you. If you fail to respond to an order -- typically because the app is frozen or acting up -- you are scolded. "You missed a delivery opportunity, which will now be offered to the next available PrancingReindeer." 

This digital hectoring wears me down. Who needs the cajoling, scolding, insinuating, needling, pressuring, belittling, and merciless nagging? Not to get too psychoanalytical about all this, but it dredges up the worst memories of growing up. It's a parental-memory nightmare-flashback. For the first time, today I encountered a fellow PrancingReindeer (my name for the delivery squad). He corroborated the woes I had encountered with the app. He was irate, ready to give up on this particular delivery vendor. 

But this person confirmed something I had been considering for a blog topic.

We treat the app like a person or persons.

He kept on using the personal pronoun "they" as he described his frustrations with the app. They said this, they did that, they told me this, they warned me about this, they didn't understand this.

I was thinking the same way.

Then a light bulb went off in my head.

"They" can't go fuck themselves because there is no "they."

I am learning to be calm when I am digitally hectored by the app by reminding myself there is no one behind the curtain, no Wizard of Oz. It is simply an algorithm or whatchamacallit responding to bits of data received or gleaned from me across the ether. It is very easy to think someone is twiddling their thumbs, timing us, watching us, waiting by the door ready to remonstrate us.

Surely the app has oceans of data on my timeliness, responsiveness, accuracy, speed, distance, heart rate, urinary frequency, attire, political views, browsing history, et cetera ad infinitum. And lakes of data are collected on the merchants and food merchants too. No doubt "they" know everything, and are using it to refine the app, I suppose.

But there is no person monitoring my delivery successes or failures. Is there?

It's all just automatically triggered prompts programmed in. 

Right? 

Are you sure?