Open AccessGovernable Stacks against Digital Colonialism
Author(s) -
Nathan Schneider
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
triplec
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.564
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 1726-670X
DOI - 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1281
Subject(s) - colonialism , resistance (ecology) , corporate governance , the internet , centrality , political economy , political science , sociology , media studies , business , law , computer science , world wide web , ecology , mathematics , finance , combinatorics , biology
Critics have been converging around the logic of colonialism to describe the Internet economy. If we are serious about the laden language of the colonial, we should be ready to learn from struggles against pre-digital empires and colonial regimes. Although acts of insurrection may attract more attention, one thing leaders and theorists of anticolonial resistance have stressed persistently is the centrality of self-governance in everyday life as both a means and end of their movements. But the dominant platforms for online communities are not well-suited for durable self-governing. Resistance often relies on the same colonial firms it opposes. What would community-governed technologies look like? This paper introduces the concept of “governable stacks”, a framework for self-governing as resistance to digital colonialism.