We already know how much of our data is collected and used to profile and target us. The real question is why, knowing all this, do we keep going back for more?

Technology has delivered a world that we expect to revolve around us, our needs and preferences, and our unique personalities. Each of us willingly yields up the most intimate facets of our behaviour and interests in return for a world that’s exponentially easier to navigate. Ours is the Personalised Century, where we view ourselves primarily in terms of what rather than who we are – the objects of others’ recognition, rather than the subjects and authors of our own lives. That we keep handing ourselves over to technology is not a sign of its supernatural powers, but rather our own shrinking sense of selves.

Interrogating the historical currents that have brought us here, Harkness envisages a messier, riskier and less comfortable world than the one into which we’re sliding. Challenging readers to scrutinise what’s missing from their personalised menus, Recognised encourages us to look afresh at the familiar: not just the technology we use every day, how we relate to the world and those around us.