The Moorings of the Intangible: Technology and Social Control

Current technological developments lead us to think about the novelty of the social system in which we live. In this paper we address how current technology responds to a conception of order rooted in the liberalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and an updating of its conceptions of work, leisure and welfare that only results in greater productivity, social control and profit. The speed of change and the lack of acceptance of these changes by people and institutions, provides ample opportunity for control and business for companies and governments that act with impunity, in the case of dictatorships, and with slight restrictions in the case of Western democracies. The undeniable advantages of the use of technology have their counterpart in the blurring of all that has to do with liberties and classic liberal rights.