Since being coined in 1997, “range anxiety” has evolved into a contemporary condition [2]. I have lost count of how many times I have changed plans because of low batteries on my devices. When planning a long outdoor trip or heading into a marathon meeting, checking battery levels has become as automatic as checking the weather. Even a simple grocery run might be postponed when that battery icon turns red.
While batteries increasingly hold us hostage to their whims, ironically, they have gradually vanished from our sight. Though they have become the invisible lifeblood of our digital existence, batteries are physically hidden away from us. The removable AA batteries have been gradually replaced by hermetically sealed power cells that consumers cannot easily detach. Our relationship with these power sources has changed—we now interact with batteries only through the devices they power, carrying different chargers for different gadgets. The sole purpose of the battery is to ensure that our devices function properly. We need batteries only because we need devices, and devices “need” batteries.
This tension between increasing dependence and increasing invisibility characterizes our modern relationship with battery technology. As these power sources have become more integral to our daily functioning, they have receded further from our conscious awareness. We notice them only in their absence or failure, experiencing their presence primarily as constraint rather than liberation. The battery has transformed from a visible, manipulable component to a sealed, inaccessible force that quietly governs our movements, decisions, and anxieties.
What has given rise to this tension between dependency and invisibility? What does it mean when a technology’s power over us grows in direct proportion to its disappearance from view? The following analyses, with a special focus on batteries, will serve as a lens through which we can interrogate these broader questions about technological mediation and its subtle reconfiguration of human agency, mobility, and experience in contemporary life.
From Mediation to Erasure: A Nilism Relation
This shifting relationship between humans and batteries can be understood through the lens of philosophical frameworks examining technological mediation. Don Ihde’s phenomenological approach offers essential groundwork with his four types of technology-human relations: embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background relations [3]. Each articulates different ways technologies mediate our experience of the world and ourselves. Building upon Ihde’s typology, Nolen Gertz introduces the concept of “nihilism relations,” which he formalizes as: Technology → World – (–I) [4].
In nihilism relations, we permit technology to mediate our world in such a way that our own agency recedes from concern. According to Gertz, “Whereas in alterity relations the world fades from our concern, and in background relations the technology fades from our concern, in nihilism relations the I fades from our concern.”[4] (p.55) In other words, we are not only using technologies unconsciously but unconsciously using technologies to absolve ourselves of the agency. Our will and critical awareness recede, allowing technology to direct our experience.
Our relationship with batteries reveals a subtle shift toward “nihilism relations.” It is not uncommon to hear complaints like “My phone died on me” and “my laptop barely made it through the day,” as if the users had no agency in the battery’s depletion. The battery ostensibly operates in the background, yet when users consistently displace their concerns onto it, the “I” is being written out of the narrative.
This linguistic construction is telling us that we speak of batteries as autonomous actors rather than as components subject to our usage patterns and choices. Designers, too, participate in this dynamic by prioritizing seamless, autonomous operation that encourages users to remain uninformed or disengaged about the technology’s functioning.
The Mobility Paradox: Freedom Reframed as Constraint
A further illustration of this shift is how batteries have changed our idea of mobility.
Batteries historically embodied the value of mobility. They freed us from the restraint of fixed power resources, allowing mobile phones and electric vehicles to travel anywhere. Whether it was early laptops or portable music players, the idea was simple: take your device anywhere. From laptops and phones to electric cars, these products were sold as tools entailing mobility and freedom, letting us break away from the grid and live life on the go.
But over time, this promise has quietly flipped. As our dependence on batteries has grown, mobility has been reframed by its limits. The term “range anxiety” originated from the electric vehicle industry [2] and precisely captures this reversal. As “an anxiety or fear that one may not reach a target before the battery runs out”, range anxiety transforms freedom of movement into a calculus of constraints. It’s not just cars, either. People go to public places to find an outlet for their phones, dim their laptop screens to stretch the last bit of power, or even change plans because the device didn’t charge overnight. Battery life has become another factor in our movements.
So instead of feeling free, we often feel tethered. The battery was supposed to cut the cord, but it’s replaced with a digital leash. We are constantly managing energy instead of enjoying mobility. Battery constraints have subtly reshaped the meaning of mobility, turning it from the freedom to move into the need to stay charged, without deliberate intention.
This shift also reveals a quiet withdrawal of human agency. We no longer see ourselves as the ones actively shaping our mobility; instead, we respond to what our batteries allow. Routes, routines, and decisions are adjusted not because we want to, but because the device demands it. As our dependence increases, our sense of control fades. This gradual reconceptualization of mobility marks a broader pattern: not just a loss of freedom, but a fading awareness that we ever had a choice.
The Shadow of Nihilism Relations
This fading of human agency in our relationship with batteries carries significant ethical implications. First, we observe a displacement of responsibility. When we do not perceive ourselves as agents in how technology operates, we relinquish our autonomy and reject our accountability. The tendency to say, “the battery died” or “my phone ran out of power” linguistically shifts blame to the device. Such displacement can unintentionally discourage user engagement with maintenance, as the technology’s design often implies that these processes are predetermined.
Moreover, nihilism relations create what I would like to term “value vacuums,” where technological development advances without clear ethical or human-centered goals. In treating batteries merely as technical components serving other devices, their design becomes subsumed under a chain of functional ends, which are abstracted from the human world. When technologies are framed within a purely instrumental logic, questions about what values they should promote become obscured. The design goal becomes efficiency for another system, not meaning for human life. In this way, batteries cease to mediate human purposes and instead mediate technological self-perpetuation.
Perhaps more concerning, the disappearance of the human agent reinforces a kind of technological determinism and fatalism. If we behave as if "the technology will just do what it does" regardless of human choice, we approach a deterministic view where technology’s internal logic drives social outcomes with minimal human influence. In this way of thinking, we do not just use technology; we adapt ourselves to its rhythms. We become managers of battery levels and caretakers of charge cycles. Over time, we become machines of energy-level management rather than agents who shape how technology fits into our lives.
The Challenge of Designing from a Distance
If users fade from view in nihilism relations, designers often do as well, but in a different way. Rather than passively surrendering agency, designers face the challenge of creating technologies from a position of structural detachment. This detachment is not always voluntary. It emerges from the complexity of modern technological systems, where decisions are distributed across teams, standards, supply chains, and constraints far beyond any one person’s control.
For designers and engineers, engaging users with an invisible, application-diverse component like a battery could be very difficult. Batteries lack a dedicated user interface beyond perhaps a charge indicator. Consequently, traditional user-centered design approaches struggle to apply since users have few direct interactions to shape. Designers often work on them as abstract components, selecting for capacity, chemistry, safety, or size, which creates a gap where user needs and behaviors receive insufficient consideration in the design process.
Consequently, accountability and authorship for the behavior of technology become diffused. A battery inside a phone or laptop is the result of multiple decisions shaped by supply chains, markets, and regulatory frameworks. By the time the device reaches a user, no single designer’s intent is visible. When a battery fails prematurely or causes harm, users may blame "the technology" or the brand, but the specific designers or design choices remain behind the curtain. In this sense, designers disappear from the moral landscape: their work enables the technology’s apparent autonomy but is not transparent to users, complicating how we assign responsibility or advocate for ethical design.
Reintroducing the Human: A Step Toward Restoring Agency?
How might we begin to reclaim human agency in our relationship with batteries and similar invisible infrastructures? This passivity can be countered through both conceptual and material invention. The first step may be linguistic and conceptual. Cultivating more precise language about technological interactions could help restore awareness of human choice and action. Likewise, design can play a crucial role. Battery interfaces that move beyond simple percentages to reveal usage patterns, energy sources, or environmental impact could help users understand themselves as active participants rather than passive recipients.
We might also question the values embedded in the design of batteries. The pursuit of invisibility and convenience reflects a particular prioritization of uninterrupted use and minimal cognitive burden. But what if battery design emphasized repairability, sustainability, or user control instead? Features like removable, user-replaceable batteries may compromise sleekness but would reposition users as responsible agents who maintain and care for their devices rather than simply consuming them.
Additionally, the process of battery production and lifecycle management could become more transparent and easier to track. Tools like battery passports, which are being developed to document sourcing, performance, and recycling data, could be made accessible to users rather than remaining limited to regulators or manufacturers. Making this information visible would encourage users to engage more thoughtfully with the ethical and environmental aspects of their technology use.
This kind of transparency does more than inform users. It also highlights the important role of designers by empowering designers to take an active role in shaping technologies that promote reflection, care, and sustainability. It recognizes their creative and ethical contributions, not just as problem-solvers, but as cultural agents who influence how people relate to technology and to the world. Reclaiming agency is not only a matter of user awareness; it is also a design responsibility and a design achievement. It opens the door for creating technologies that invite ethical engagement and human meaning, rather than quietly displacing them.
As Gertz reminds us, “we must not try to flee from our technologies... but we must reflect on how we use them and what they make of us.” [4] (p.207) Restoring agency is not about achieving flawless or absolute control, nor is it about abandoning battery-powered devices. It is an invitation to awareness, a call to recognize ourselves again within the systems we have built.
References
[1] Cover Image: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (May 25 version). Response to the prompt “Please create a 3:2 surrealism poster-style illustration inspired by the text ‘The Vanishing Users and Concealed Power”. The concept is that batteries are increasingly hidden within devices, evolving into technologies designed for other technologies rather than for direct human use. As a result, humans are gradually giving up their agency, becoming entangled in charging cables and complex devices, and ultimately being excluded from the processes that shape their experiences.
[2] Range Anxiety. (2025, April). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_anxiety
[3] Verbeek & Rosenberger (2015), Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relations.
[4] Gertz, N (2024). Nihilism and Technology .