Technology and Freedom: Some Reflections

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to explore how technology intervenes in our conception of freedom by putting certain aspects of it in the foreground while leaving other aspects in the shadows or in oblivion. Through a synthetic analysis of the essential characteristics of technological progress, it is shown how the dimension of freedom exalted by the technocratic mentality is ultimately freedom as autonomy and as independence from all kinds of limits. The question is whether technology can really keep its promise of total liberation or if humanity‘s fulfillment rather asks to travel other paths guided by another concept of freedom.