The Fallacy of Autonomy and the Technological Trap

A few days ago, I took part, together with Eulalia Pérez Sedeño, in a conversation during 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 conception of what it means to live in society and of what the very notion of autonomy embodies. And, in relation 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 that: 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 happier?, fuller?, more… autonomous, again. From this perspective, we would place 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 this, 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 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 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 social context. And, specifically, ageing and the very process of growing old will not work like that either.

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 something that has always been there: interdependence. We constantly need others, even though for a long time we pretended we didn’t. I’m not referring only to issues related to the need for care, social and health support… That’s 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 when 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 can have a perfectly automated home, full of sensors and technologies designed to promote autonomy within the household. But what happens if the building has no lift? What happens if there are stairs to reach the entrance and I cannot climb them?

What happens if the pavements are too narrow, if the ground is deteriorated, or if 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 respond to the needs I have? I understand autonomy not merely as being able to make a coffee or turn on a light through a mobile app. Autonomy also has to do with being able to continue taking part in social life. Being able to go outside. Interact with others. 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 displacement of populations from certain neighbourhoods, the precarisation of care, the extreme individualisation of daily life or the deterioration of public services (those that provide us with greater longevity and on which its quality depends) are far less present in public conversation 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 evolution or an idealisation of the past.

I believe, however, that we need to recover the ability to problematise technology. To ask for whom it truly 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. Self‑checkout machines that replace human assistance, 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 don’t work, they shift responsibility (even guilt) onto those who struggle most to adapt, without questioning the design, the system, or the prior definition of the problem they supposedly address.

As I find this 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 older people who are perfectly autonomous within 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 infinite useful and useless apps I have on my phone, none seems to give me an answer to these questions. I fear I have no choice but to keep pondering.