Tech: Is Technology Setting Us Free?

August 27, 2026 - 01:26

For as long as we can remember, the future has been sold to us as a place where machines do the heavy lifting. The promise has been consistent: technology will set you free. It will connect you to the world, give you control, and make life undeniably better.

This vision is not new. In 1956, General Motors produced a film imagining the world of 1976, where cars drove themselves, guided by traffic-control towers. By 1993, AT&T was pitching a concept that sounds remarkably like the smart homes and smart watches we have today. Many of those predictions have come to pass, at least in some form.

But the question remains: has all this innovation actually delivered on its core promise? Historian Jill Lepore sits down with us to examine whether the technology that was supposed to liberate us has instead created new constraints. We explore the gap between the glossy advertisements of the past and the reality of our always-connected present. Is the freedom we were promised the same as the freedom we have now? The answer, as Lepore suggests, is far more complicated than any corporate vision of the future.