They even take care not to create any emotional friction as you enter your life details into Facebook. One fantastic example that Dougherty-Wold gave me was adding a "life event" on Timeline. "There's a menu of those events and a typical menu would list the options alphabetically," she said, "but if we did, you'd have divorce sitting on top of engagement. The content strategist who worked on that menu had a tremendous amount of empathy." The list was reordered to follow the arc of a relationship. "Just by not making you think about divorce at the same time that you're thinking about engagement," she concluded, "we're getting out of your way."

In fact, they have three rules for disappearing from sight: "Keep it simple, get to the point, and talk like a human." These are not too far away from the rules we try to use here on The Atlantic Tech.

But one thing kept sticking for me as I thought about how remarkably and cleverly constructed the Facebook world really is: While the interface and words might not attract your attention, they are still structuring your behavior. And you'll probably never even notice. It's kinda nice that Facebook doesn't guide you to think about divorce while you're entering in your engagement. But that decision is still a reflection of an ethos, and that's something the company doesn't seem to want to own.

This crystallized for me during an exchange I had with Dougherty-Wold towards the end of our conversation. After she told me that Facebook's writers try to talk like humans, I replied "But it is fundamentally still the voice of the borg. It's not like [users] are talking to a human. It is still a system that they are interacting with and not another person."

"They are talking to each other, right?" she countered. "If you're using Facebook, you're telling your story to whoever you choose to be friends with."

"But it's still mediated through the structure and you're the voice of that layer of mediation," I said

"I think if we're doing our job, you're not feeling like it's mediated," she said

"But it is," I insisted.

"When you call your mom on the phone, are you thinking, 'I am talking on a device'?"

"That's an interesting question," I said. "I would say yes. But I can understand why people say no."

"I would say, I'm talking to my mom. The only time I would say I'm talking to a device is when my cell carrier drops."

At any given moment, yes, it is probably more important to you that you're talking to your mother than talking on a phone. But what about the system that allows that voice to come through that particular handset? I see Doughtery-Wold's point, but I wonder, what responsibility do the system makers have in helping us think about the system?

Can we wave away the structure of our tools so easily? And are we comfortable with doing so around the highway system or the way food is produced in this country or gun ownership? Are all technologies neutral? ("Facebook doesn't friend request, people do.")