Colonialism and technology

When we think about colonialism we tend to follow a standard definition of what it is, more or less what Wikipedia defines as

Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their religion, language, economics, and other cultural practices. The foreign administrators rule the territory in pursuit of their interests, seeking to benefit from the colonised region’s people and resources.

If we think about technical colonialism and in particular Internet, we may agree that it escapes most of the concepts addressed in this definition, its a blurred territory, who is in power is uncertain, and who benefits is unclear.

We have to decipher in a new paradigm, what is technological colonialism, technology as a tool is neutral but who designs the AI algorithms, what criteria does the code that is developed follow, who implements the “smart devices” and the IoT?

To do this we propose workshops in different formats to open up spaces for collective thinking to find out how define technical colonialism and the implications it has in today’s society.