We’ve been promised a future where technology works for us, not the other way around. Cars that earn money while we sleep, fridges that automatically reorder our food, phones that know our heartbeat before we do. It sounds like a dream, right? A world where convenience rules, and every detail of our lives is optimized by machines smarter than we could ever be.
But here’s the problem: the more we hand over control, the more we forget how to use it ourselves. We’re told this is progress. We’re told it’s the future. But what if this is less about innovation and more about offloading responsibility? What if it’s not freedom at all?
Autonomy is being outsourced. Convenience is replacing agency. Our tools are getting smarter, but our minds are getting duller. We’re trading the rawness of human instinct for the cold precision of algorithms. The wisdom we once gained through experience is now being replaced by software updates. We’re giving up our will for Wi-Fi.
Think about it. We’re promised passive income from our self-driving cars, but what happens when the machine begins to earn more than we do? What happens when the car knows more about us than we know about ourselves? What happens when the machine decides what we do next? At what point do we lose control of our own lives?
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. We’ve already crossed the threshold. The owner is becoming the owned.
Imagine this: your car is working for you while you sleep, your fridge is tracking your diet, and your phone is predicting your health. But who’s really in charge here? Who is driving the car when you’re awake?
We’re being sold a vision of the future where everything is automated, but what they don’t tell us is this: it’s a soft reboot of control, quieter, slicker, and fully consensual. It’s not a revolution. It’s a quiet surrender.
The machines are taking over the decisions. We’ve automated our schedules, our homes, our work—but have we automated our own sovereignty? Because once the machine knows more than we do, the question isn’t ‘where are we going?’ It’s ‘who programmed the map?’