Digital Autonomy
Origin: Concept developed as a critical response to “digital sovereignty”
Definition
Digital autonomy is the individual’s capacity to use digital tools according to their own rules, with awareness and freedom. It differs from digital sovereignty, which is a political discourse addressed to states and institutions whose practical impotence has been established.
Autonomy, in its etymological sense, is the right to govern oneself by one’s own laws. Digital autonomy is therefore the exercise of this right in the space of technological usage: choosing one’s tools, understanding their implications, deciding what to entrust to them and what to refuse them.
In my writings
Digital autonomy does not imply disconnection — an extreme and illusory position in a society where the digital is structurally omnipresent. Completely disconnecting is materially impossible for the majority of working people, and socially untenable. Disconnection is not resistance: it is a capitulation that leaves the field to those who master the tools.
Digital autonomy instead requires learning, choosing open and interoperable tools, and becoming aware that our digital consumption feeds our own subjugation. Faced with the impotence of states to impose genuine digital sovereignty, individual digital autonomy is the credible path of concrete resistance.
It requires remaining the protagonist of one’s actions: taking on the effort of doing what one wants to do, without delegating it entirely to miracle solutions. It is an active stance, not a defensive one.
Articles where this term is developed
- Digital autonomy as resistance
- Toward digital resistance
- On the decerebration of the masses
- Eat local tech
- The political impact of social media