Digital Emancipation: Are We Becoming Prisoners of Our Own Device?

Contemporary information systems in combination with high-speed internet, liberate individuals as they set them free from time, place and device restrictions of their everyday life. As a result, they blur the boundaries between work, social and personal life contexts. In this paper we introduce the concept of digital emancipation to refer to the notion of freedom experienced by individuals due the wide use of contemporary information systems. We argue that digital emancipation may have both a positive and a negative impact in each context as the individual may be at the same time be digitally emancipated, but also bound to the technology and its capabilities or limitations. We draw on existing literature to provide indications that digital emancipation is associated to both positive and negative experiences within each context and highlight that tensions between these mixed experiences exists. Building on this analysis, we then set the ground and motivates the need for an integrated theoretical framework for understanding the balancing effort of the digitally emancipated individual.