Freedom and autonomy in the digital age: Considerations of power and agency

Governance relying on emerging digital technologies is steadfast expanding in terms of both prevalence and variety of use. Increased digitalization of governance aims to promote efficiency and convenience, but at what cost? In this paper, I argue this comes to the detriment of personal freedoms and autonomy, and question the fairness and social desirability of this trade-off.
The basic premise of the paper rests on the conceptualization of the use of emerging technologies in governance as sociotechnical experimentation (van de Poel, 2013), within which the laws of unintended consequences operate and consequently position sociotechnical experimentation as a potential hazard vis-à-vis the population. Grounded in examples, this argument starts from describing current digital surveillance practices and their effects on different types of freedom (freedom from interference, freedom from domination, freedom as authenticity, freedom of thought; as well as legally defined fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech).
Special attention is given to more covert effects of governance by digital technologies on freedom. While these subtle effects may be indirect and gradual, they are also consequently more insidious. Emerging digital technologies reflect a certain worldview, making them not as neutral nor objective as they might seem. In terms of epistemic implications on freedom, for example, it is crucial to note that the process of datafication is itself reflective of the western reductionist worldview based on quantification and isolation of causal effects between distinct variables.
Connected to the notion of epistemological neutrality is the widely contested notion of value neutrality of technology (Schopp et al., 2019; Miller, 2021). Emerging digital technologies are vectors of certain enlightenment values, such as individualism (Mohr, 2023) and progressivism (Rosevear, 2021), the universal desirability of both of which has been brought into question in recent years. Therefore, considering the epistemic and value assumptions “encoded” in emerging digital technologies, it appears that digitalization of governance is unlikely to promote cultural, psychological and economic freedom. This concern is most salient, as decolonial and critical scholars point out, in examples of digital surveillance and algorithmic governance in the areas of migration and asylum procedures, as well as early implementations of digital surveillance and algorithmic governance infrastructures and policies in the Global South.
These and similar examples show that nascent implementation of governance by emerging technologies often concerns socially vulnerable citizens. Building on this notion, the chapter progresses to consider power dynamics that determine and facilitate emerging technology based policy experimentation on vulnerable members of the society. Such power dynamics are rooted in a history of extractive and exploitative socio-economic practices, that increasingly become automated and legitimized through the use of digital technologies. Next, state-corporate cooperations in which these policies are rooted are analyzed, with particular attention to changes in power balances between state and corporate actors. Finally, the implications of digital surveillance and algorithmic governance on citizens’ power and agency are considered.
I conclude that, while emerging digital technologies have the potential to facilitate certain human activities, their use in governance in fact dehumanizes the individuals and communities on the receiving end of such governance. The examples provided illustrate that experimental implementation of emerging technologies follows existing societal power disparities, and as such results in disproportionate surveillance and control of vulnerable members of society, with detrimental effects on freedom as a personal and public value.