argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Technology
Digital colonialism
Diana Franco 2023ko azaroaren 02a

The Internet is a territory under debate. These debates affect the future of our democracies and our paths to climate and social and environmental justice. In these struggles, for us to do our job, we need to know the dynamics of the Internet. To better understand a territory, a map always helps,” said Coding Righs friends on the Internet Territories Map in 2022.

The understanding that the territories of the Internet affect the whole world, and that the places of the world have an intentional or involuntary role, recalls the practices of other times, such as the global economic dynamics that some European peoples created with slavery, enriching themselves with the exploitation of resources of other countries and the destruction of culture. Digital colonialism is more complex, but a similar result: a few become increasingly rich by destroying the possibilities of others.

There are many issues related to digital colonialism, but today I'm going to focus on devices. For example, my house is full of devices created with components from all over the world, probably most made in China, and maybe the final straight line of your life is in Africa. Fortunately, there are many initiatives in the world working on these issues, the most interesting are those that promote reuse and fair design, such as Recyclanet and Elkartenet in the Basque Country itself. They focus on reducing consumption, extending the lives of devices through free software. In Amsterdam, they've created the FairPhone, they monitor the pathways to get the components of their devices and they design them for a long life. These are initiatives that affect the environment and not so much at the global level. When we understand that Internet territories influence the world as a whole, we are grateful for the intelligent decisions taken by public institutions that can influence the world, such as the “Right to Reparation” that the European Union is promoting.