144. Towards a Terrestrial Internet: Rethinking Digital Networks From the Ground Up
Sebastián Lehuedé, University of Cambridge; Marcela Suárez, Freie Universität Berlin
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol, Portuguese/Portugués
This open panel invites submissions exploring the actual and possible imbrications between the internet, associated data-intensive and algorithmic technologies, and the terrestrial. Echoing Bruno Latour’s work, this panel discusses how the corporate and governmental control brought about by digital capitalism materialises in specific spaces and bodies. For example, looking at the internet from a terrestrial lens brings to the fore the maritime space where underground cables pass; the lands rich in the raw materials and resources necessary to sustain the digital infrastructure; and the bodies subjected to novel forms of exploitation. These spaces and bodies are not dissociated from diverse forms of life that cohabit the planet and embody the effects of disputes over digital technologies. Inspired by decolonial and feminist decolonial thinking, this panel also interrogates the internet’s alignment with territorial occupation, extractivism and related phenomena that endanger forms of living based on a peaceful coexistence between human and non-human beings. Close attention is paid to cases of ancestral, gendered and grassroot appropriation through which communities are imagining and building technologies that can support the flourishing of multiple worlds. In connection to 4S’s theme, this open panel asks whether, when and how the internet can advance forms of living together that respect the multiple agencies that make up the territory. The contributions will show that attending to the terrestrial in the design and governance of networked technologies represents a condition for undertaking the much-needed reunion, recuperation and reconfiguration in a context of environmental destruction.
