Iron cage in the AI age

IF Max Weber were alive today, I’m pretty sure he’d be less worried about bureaucrats in grey suits and more about engineers writing code in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen.

That’s because the “iron cage” of rationality – the term the German sociologist coined over a century ago to describe how modern life gets trapped in systems designed for efficiency, predictability, and control – has found its most advanced form in artificial intelligence (AI).