There are different perspectives regarding the role of technology at work. There are those that attribute human evolution to the type of technology in use today. There are also those who see technology as inevitably dehumanizing. We present this study to contribute a theoretical-critical line to this debate, especially in the field of healthcare. To this end, we base our analysis on Marx and Lukács’s conceptions of work, abstract work and alienation. We develop a perspective of care and work within healthcare, based on this reference. We then open a dialogue with authors within Collective Health, highlighting the debate that links dehumanization of healthcare with the hegemony of hard technologies to the detriment of soft ones. We recognize the importance of this debate, but we argue that even soft technologies follow rationality that is absorbable through abstract work.
Keywords
Social alienation; Health; Technology; Work