I moderated an exchange session at the symposium of transmediale 2020, with Ulises Ali Mejias, Mél Hogan, Teresa Dillon, Sarah Friend, Solveig Suess. Excerpt from my introduction for the panel:

Processes of datafication and quantification started organizing life but they also opened the way to forms of surveillance and commodification. The cost of connectivity and the comfort that it involves, it became apparent, very much lies in the exploitation of social resources, which subsequently connects to the exploitation of natural resources for the needs of the technological infrastructures, where data is stored. And, this is a reference to the impact that the out of sight clouds of the Big Tech have on the environment, as well as on the technological fixes, the solutions being nowadays proposed.

So, what happens (we might want to ask in the framework of this panel) when the Big Tech promises to organise not only life but also nature? How are zones and territories, users and workers are differently affected? And most importantly, what can be done to confront and decolonise this extractivist model of today s networks? Is it possible to reimagine the internet as a network of many networks, as a world of multiple worlds?