Liberated Formatization

The contribution tries to sketch the development of a certain kind of technology, namely user-specific computational technologies which promise an increase in gaining individual freedom. It was a promise that increasingly led to a predominance of managed ´freedoms´ and hence, to an increased formatization of technical tools and individual perception alike. The overall effect was that a seemingly increase in individual user-freedom was accompanied by a de facto-increase in preformatted devices for achieving it, and hence, led to the actual decrease of this very freedom, despite the latter seemed to have increased steadily. All in all, the entire process to be examined here increasingly based upon formats of both an economic and technological nature. In its final outcomes, it led to an almost complete loss of freedom for the official beneficiary of such devices, the user.