On digital colonialism
Data, algorithms and technological coloniality of power in the global south
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18861/ic.2023.18.2.3523Keywords:
digital colonialism, algorithms, artificial intelligence, coloniality of powerAbstract
During the last decade, a series of structural transformations of capitalism converged in the accelerated expansion of digital technologies and have revealed a reconfiguration of different colonial dimensions that operate at a global level, both inside and outside virtual spaces. The article delves into some of the main characteristics of this new technological disposition of colonial power at a planetary level. First of all, we examine the central role of the extractivism of massive data (Big Data) and the increasing development of markets for artificial intelligence in the Big Tech driven regime of capitalist accumulation. Secondly, we identify the central elements that cross the discussion around the so-called digital colonialism and we analyze the coloniality of power expressed in the technological assemblies of informational capitalism. Finally, we will review some of the main critical strategies that recover the gaze of decolonial thought to face the capitalist regime of data accumulation and its applications based on artificial intelligence. We will conclude that the critical analysis of digital colonialism does not point to a simple rejection of new technologies, but rather to a decolonization of the knowledge economy and the scientific development implemented by Big Tech.
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References
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