April 21, 2024

E is for Electronic Colonialism

this issue of New Terms & Conditions is dedicated to the Kenyan workers, the invisible hands of artificial intelligence, subject to labor abuse and emotional trauma; to the peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo enslaved to mine for cobalt to make our smartphones, laptops, cars, and batteries; to Sudan, currently in dire humanitarian crisis that veils the benefit to tech oligarchs in keeping Black and brown countries ripe for tech authoritarianism; to all of us who are vulnerable to the imperial force of Silicon Valley, the accumulation of wealth, resources, data, and power of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, who claim rights over our data, strip us of consent, and purposely target countries in the Global South to exercise data sovereignty under the guise of creating digital equality while discriminating on which services to provide and monopolizing power over the local economies, replicating practices of the ongoing settler-colonial project in the form of digital/network connectivity infrastructure as a kind of technological evangelism, spreading the gospel of digital access in exchange for our acceptance of all cookies; may we all practice our right to "opt out" even when they position it as though we have no other choice or no other way out. ¹

video caption: "Deep Down Tidal" (2017) by Tabita Rezaire

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