The Fallacy of Autonomy and the Technological Trap

A few days ago, I took part, together with Eulalia Pérez Sedeño, in a conversation within the “Dislocaciones” event on technology, vulnerability and care, organised by María Cano Bonilla and Mónica Ramos Toro. The conversation was truly interesting, very stimulating, and it left me thinking about several issues. I would highlight, however, one question in particular: to what extent many of the technologies that supposedly come to help us live “autonomously” are, in fact, based on a profoundly mistaken understanding of what it means to live in society and of what the very notion of autonomy entails. And, related to this, which technologies supposedly designed to make our lives easier are actually making them more difficult.

One of the great contemporary promises is precisely this: how technology will make our lives easier, make us more resilient, more autonomous, more… more, in general terms. And, more specifically, how technologies will interact with ageing to produce older ages that are — supposedly — happier, fuller, more… autonomous, once again. From this perspective, we would put on the table smart homes, sensors, assistive robots, virtual assistants, health‑monitoring apps, devices to combat loneliness (I won’t insist again on what I think about that, but you can see it here), or technologies designed to allow older people to remain in their homes for longer. Everything seems oriented towards the same idea: maintaining individual independence for as long as possible.

But how do we understand that independence? Autonomy within what framework?

I would venture to say that over the last few decades (I wouldn’t know exactly when to trace it back to, but it is certainly something recent that has gained strength in recent years) we have built a very specific idea of autonomy: a person capable of solving their daily needs alone, without depending on anyone, without needing help, without, in reality, disrupting the functioning of the system too much. A deeply individualised autonomy that is also usually imagined through specific kinds of bodies: healthy, functional, fast bodies, cognitively agile and able to constantly adapt to new technological environments. An independence that is not (I insist) a “burden” for others, for the rest, for the system.

But human life does not work like that. It never has, and no matter how much we insist, it is not going to work like that now. We do not exist without a social context. And, more specifically, neither old age nor the process of ageing itself will work like that.

I would venture to say that ageing involves a series of changes in how we understand the world. Among them, I think it makes us more aware (not always explicitly, of course) of something that has always been there: interdependence. We constantly need others, even if for a long time we pretended we didn’t. I am not referring only to issues related to the need for care or social and health support… that is not even my first thought. We depend on infrastructures, on bonds, on care, on liveable neighbourhoods, on community networks, on public transport, on nearby services, on people who sustain everyday life. On the shopkeeper, on the neighbour who greets us and notices that one day we look worse, on the bus driver who opens the manual ramp when the automatic one doesn’t work. We also depend on people with whom we will never interact directly, such as those who design the spaces or the technologies we use.

And perhaps that is why many of today’s technological solutions give me a somewhat strange feeling: they promise autonomy while making invisible all the dependencies that make life possible.

For me, there is an example that is particularly revealing. We may have a perfectly automated home, full of sensors and technologies designed to promote autonomy inside the house. But what happens if the building has no lift? What if there are stairs to access the entrance and I cannot climb them? What if the pavements are too narrow, the ground is deteriorated, or the neighbourhood shops have disappeared and I have nowhere to buy what I need?

Is autonomy possible then? What kind of life would that be, if I can be very autonomous inside my home but cannot leave it, or cannot meet my own needs? I understand autonomy not merely as being able to make a coffee or switch on a light through a mobile app. Autonomy also has to do with being able to remain part of social life. Being able to go outside. To interact with others. To continue inhabiting the world. And technology is not helping us with that.

My feeling is that we are trying to solve deeply social problems through individual devices. As if dependency were an exclusively bodily issue and not also an urban, economic, relational or political one.

The disappearance of community networks, the expulsion of residents from certain neighbourhoods, the precarisation of care, the extreme individualisation of daily life, or the deterioration of public services (those that give us longer lives and on which the quality of those lives depends) receive far less attention in public debate than the latest technological innovation capable of monitoring vital signs or detecting falls.

For years we have heard that certain technologies would allow older people to live more independently. But perhaps we should ask: independent from what, and from whom? And even for what purpose? Because many times that supposed independence actually translates into a growing disconnection from the human and community networks that sustain life and give longevity meaning.

There was a phrase that came up several times in the conversation and that I think is important to recover: the problem is not technology itself, but the “technological imperative”. The idea that every social problem must necessarily have a technological solution. As if innovation, algorithms and everything labelled as intelligent were always equivalent to well‑being.

This also means that any resistance or questioning of certain forms of digitalisation or certain technological uses is automatically considered reactionary, a brake on progress, or an idealisation of the past.

I believe, however, that we need to recover the ability to problematise technology. To ask for whom it really works, from what idea of body and existence it has been designed, and what kind of society it is helping to build.

Because many times technology does not eliminate work or dependency: it simply shifts them. We see it constantly in everyday life. ATMs that replace human service, apps that transfer administrative procedures to users, digital systems that require continuous learning, or care devices that end up generating new burdens for caregivers (and make their work even more invisible). And when they fail, responsibility (even guilt) is shifted onto those who struggle to adapt, without questioning the design, the system, or the initial definition of the problem they supposedly address. A bit like what I said here.

Since this seems to me not only tremendously unfair but also inefficient and even somewhat absurd, I would like to recover the idea of interdependence as a necessary condition for a “good existence”. Because in a society obsessed with the self‑sufficiency of “me‑myself‑and‑I”, recognising that we need others can become almost a revolutionary gesture.

Perhaps the goal should not be to build perfectly autonomous older people inside hyper‑technologised and hyper‑intelligent homes, but rather societies capable of sustaining life even when vulnerability exists, without turning that vulnerability into an individual failure. Moreover, the key question for me is not so much how technology helps us live longer, but how we make longevity meaningful — how lives can be not only autonomous but dignified, participatory, lives worth living, to put it simply.

And among the endless useful and useless apps on my mobile phone, none seems to offer answers to these questions. I suppose I have no choice but to keep pondering.