"If we put on the glasses of economic sociology, it appears ... that matching corresponds to a specific form of coordination close but distinct from both planning and the market."
That's a sentence that caught my eye (using Google translate) from the recent book by the French sociologists Melchior Simioni and Philippe Steiner
La société du matching (The Matching Society)
Here's how the publisher's web page introduces it:
"The upheavals brought about by the irruption of matching technology, in all its dimensions, are updating major challenges in our societies. The matching society is not the future of our modern societies, it is its present. The ambition of this essay is to to understand what it changes in our lives.
"At several decisive stages of our lives, we entrust our fate to algorithms that sort individuals according to a very singular pattern: we choose and we are chosen at the same time. Access to resources as essential as training (with Parcoursup or Affelnet), a romantic partner (Tinder, Meetic and so many others), certain care or a job depends on this technology.
"Unlike the market relationship, where paying is enough, or social benefits, which are paid as a matter of right, matching presupposes a new social relationship: we express our wishes according to the information at our disposal and it is on the basis of the data we provide that the selection is made.
"This principle profoundly changes our relationship with the collective. Because it forces us to tell the truth about ourselves, our hopes, our desires, it accelerates the advent of a singularist society."
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I've had occasion to blog about the work of Professor Steiner before:
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