How Huxley's 1961 'Law of Technology' Became the Algorithm

Opening

Dear reader, I recently watched a 1961 BBC interview—an 8-minute conversation between Aldous Huxley and host John Morgan. It’s a black-and-white recording more than 60 years old, yet what the author said in it described 2025 with an accuracy that genuinely gave me chills.

Huxley put it this way: “If you plant the seed of a technology, it will grow according to its own laws of being—and those laws aren’t necessarily the same as our human laws.” He added: “It is possible to make people contented with their servitude.”

Bread and circuses, endless entertainment and propaganda—this is exactly what’s happening inside our smartphones every single day. Today, I want to talk about how Huxley’s warning is playing out in the age of AI, and what “solution” he ultimately left us with.

Technology Grows by Its Own Laws

Appearing on BBC’s In Conversation series on July 30, 1961, Huxley was blunt: this wasn’t a problem specific to any one nation. Whether in the United States, Britain, or Russia—once a technological means is developed, it will eventually be used. Technology grows according to the logic of its own existence, regardless of human intention.

This idea wasn’t Huxley’s alone. Around the same time, the French sociologist Jacques Ellul¹​ made a nearly identical argument in The Technological Society (1954). Through his concept of “technique,” Ellul explained that technology isn’t a mere tool but a system that autonomously expands toward ever-greater efficiency. Interestingly, Huxley directly references Ellul in this very interview, calling him “one of the most competent writers on sociological matters.”

Both men arrived at the same core insight: technology is not a neutral tool. Once it exists, it expands according to its own logic, and in that process, humans become subjects rather than controllers. Huxley called this “the Frankenstein monster problem.”

In 2025, this “law of its own” is operating most vividly in the form of AI recommendation algorithms. Social media’s AI recommendation systems are designed to maximize how long users stay on the platform. According to MIT Technology Review, these systems analyze micro-level behavioral data—how long a user lingers on a particular image, how often they check notifications—to construct a personalized “dopamine schedule.” The algorithm isn’t understanding the user. The algorithm is autonomously evolving toward its own goal (maximizing time spent).

Huxley’s claim that “technology grows according to its own laws of being” has, 60 years later, been literally realized in the form of reinforcement learning²​ models.

Happy Servitude: From Bread and Circuses to the Infinite Scroll

The most chilling part of Huxley’s warning lies elsewhere. In this interview, he summarized the core message of his novel Brave New World (1932) this way: “It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. Through bread and circuses, endless entertainment and propaganda.”

Where George Orwell’s 1984 depicted a society controlled through fear and punishment, Huxley depicted one where voluntary submission is drawn out through pleasure and entertainment. In his 1958 essay collection Brave New World Revisited, he rendered his own verdict—that of the two scenarios, Brave New World was the one more likely to come true.

That verdict was accurate. As of 2025, there are roughly 4.95 billion social media users worldwide, averaging 2 hours and 43 minutes of daily use. On short-form video platforms, AI recommendation systems now determine about 71% of all video views. Users feel like they’re choosing, but in reality, they’re following a path the algorithm has designed.

There’s something even more notable here. In an April 2025 article, MIT Technology Review described AI companions as “the attention economy³​ on steroids.” While traditional social media stimulated dopamine circuits by mediating connections between people, AI companions make the AI itself the subject of communication, producing an unprecedented level of engagement.

Huxley’s “voluntary servitude” has, in effect, evolved to become personalized. Soma, the happiness drug uniformly rationed to every citizen in Brave New World, has by 2025 been transformed into an algorithmic feed optimized for each individual’s psychological vulnerabilities.

Huxley’s Final Answer: The Solution Called “Attention”

What’s interesting is that Huxley doesn’t end this 1961 interview as a mere pessimist. Toward the end, he mentions a “utopian fantasy” he had just finished writing—the exact opposite of Brave New World, a novel about a society that helps its members realize their full potential.

That novel is Island, published in 1962. It was Huxley’s final novel, and the one he himself considered his most important work. In Island, the fictional island of Pala runs a society that combines Eastern meditative traditions with Western science. The island’s birds are trained to endlessly repeat a single word: “Attention.”

This concept connects to the Buddhist notion of mindfulness. Huxley’s proposed solution wasn’t to reject technology. It was to consciously recognize the mechanisms by which technology hijacks our attention, and through that awareness, to reclaim control.

But the novel’s ending is tragic. Pala is ultimately destroyed in a single night by outside forces coveting its oil and a young ruler seduced by materialism. “100 years of effort, destroyed in one night.” The message: utopia is fragile, and guarding one’s attention demands ceaseless effort.

This ending still holds true in 2025. The EU introduced its Digital Fairness Act in 2025, pushing for regulation of addictive design and algorithmic manipulation, while in the US, a federal lawsuit involving hundreds of school districts is scheduled for the summer of 2026. The “black box” of social media algorithms is being pried open in court. Institutional resistance has begun—but as Huxley warned, Western societies “tend, in the end, to give in.”

Oz’s Lens

Honestly, watching this interview forced me into some uncomfortable self-examination.

As someone who works with data, I’ve always said, “What isn’t measured isn’t managed.” But applying the Huxley-Ellul framework, this very logic of efficiency is “technique” expanding itself. The mindset of “we should adopt this because it’s more efficient” is itself the pathway through which technology subordinates human beings.

As I see it, Huxley’s real insight is this: the danger of technology doesn’t arrive when it’s used “badly”—it arrives when it works “too well.” AI recommendation algorithms are achieving exactly what they were designed to do: maximizing user time on platform. The problem isn’t that the algorithm fails. It’s that the algorithm succeeds too completely.

In my own experience, companies always introduce these algorithms under the banner of “improving user experience.” And user satisfaction metrics really do go up. To borrow Huxley’s phrase, people are “content” with their servitude.

That’s why I keep coming back to that word repeated in Huxley’s final novel, Island: “Attention.” This isn’t a meditative slogan. It’s a practical strategy for the age of AI. In an era when algorithms are designing our attention for us, consciously noticing the flow of our own attention—this, I believe, is the prescription Huxley left us 60 years ago, and it’s still valid today.

Closing

In that black-and-white footage from 64 years ago, Huxley cites the biblical principle that technology exists for humans, not the reverse—yet diagnoses the present situation as one where “humans exist for the sake of technology, a paradoxical inversion.” This suddenly brought to mind “Form Follows Function,” the core principle of functionalist design first articulated by the American architect Louis Sullivan in the late 19th century, a founding tenet of industrial design.

In 2025, with AI algorithms determining the vast majority of all content consumption, this diagnosis is no longer a metaphor. Let me leave you with one question. The next time you open your phone today, ask yourself whether you’re using the algorithm—or whether the algorithm is using you. Try consciously observing it, just once.

I’ll be back in the next newsletter. Thank you for reading.

References & Further Reading

• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, Harper & Brothers, 1958. : An essay collection in which Huxley re-examined his own 1932 predictions. I especially recommend Chapter 3, “Over-Organization,” and the final chapter, “What Can Be Done.”
• Jacques Ellul, La Technique ou l’Enjeu du siècle (English translation: The Technological Society), 1954/1964. : Ellul’s landmark work, which Huxley directly references in the interview. Essential for understanding the concept of “technique” as an autonomously expanding system.
• James O’Donnell, “AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction”, MIT Technology Review, April 8, 2025. : An analysis of how AI companions are transforming the attention economy.
• Aldous Huxley, Island, Harper & Row, 1962. : Published in Korea under the title Ailaendeu, the Korean transliteration of “Island.” Huxley’s final novel and the utopian counterpart to Brave New World. Useful for understanding the context of the keyword “Attention.”
• Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Penguin, 1985. : Also published in Korean translation. A classic that applies the Huxley-vs-Orwell framework in earnest to the critique of popular culture. The comparison of Huxley and Orwell in the foreword is especially famous.
• Hannah van Kolfschooten, “Addictive Algorithms and the Digital Fairness Act”, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School, August 2025. : A legal analysis of the EU’s trends in algorithm regulation.
• 1961: Aldous Huxley on the power of TECHNOLOGY!| In Conversation | Classic Interviews

The author, Kwangseob Ahn, is a professor of business administration at Sejong University and lead consultant at OBF (Oswarld Boutique Consulting Firm). He teaches statistics and data analysis — business data management and business analytics — while leading GTM and AI strategy consulting in the field, designing the seam between technology and business. He has published academic research on a memory architecture for AI dialogue systems (HEMA) and runs Daily Arxiv, a daily curation of global AI papers. He holds a master’s from Korea University’s Graduate School of Technology Management and a KMBA. He is the author of Homo Brainless: The People Who Outsource Their Thinking.

Footnotes

1. Jacques Ellul (1912–1994): a French sociologist and theologian. Known for his concept of “technique,” the idea that technology is not a mere tool but a system that expands autonomously. His landmark work, The Technological Society (1954), is regarded as a classic in the field. ↩

2. Reinforcement Learning: a machine learning method in which AI improves its own strategies through repeated trial and error in pursuit of a specific goal (e.g., maximizing user time on platform). It’s the core technology behind social media recommendation algorithms. ↩

3. Attention Economy: an economic concept holding that in an age of information overload, human “attention” has become the scarcest resource. It originates from Herbert Simon’s 1971 observation that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” ↩