Understanding Freedom in the Age of Machines: What Does It Mean to Be Digitally Free?

Abstract

The 21st century has ushered in a spate of disruptive digital technologies that are enabling us to exercise our freedoms in new ways. But with these new freedoms come new challenges, new ways in which these technologies are actually making us unfree, and we still don’t have a full picture of what that means. So how are we to engage with these technologies in the meantime? I will not suggest that we get rid of them, but I will explore the idea that we can exercise our freedoms not only by using these technologies but also by choosing not to use them. But that in turn raises a new question, namely: What exactly is this negative freedom from digital technologies, and how plausibly can we exercise it?  In exploring this question, I consider the language of rights that has been used to articulate this negative freedom—with a focus on the rights set forth in data-protection, labour, and administrative law—suggesting that while these rights are far from the perfect tool for exercising our freedom from digital technologies, they nonetheless can go a long way toward that end.