Colonialism

When we think of the internet, we usually imagine a borderless, decentralised cloud, a digital utopia where information flows freely, connecting the whole of humanity. But this image is a comforting illusion. In reality, the internet is a physical, political, and economic entity. It has a geography, and that geography is starting to look unsettingly familiar. Beneath the oceans lie the true arteries of the digital world, a sprawling network of submarine fiber-optic cables. Look at a map of these cables, and you’ll see the faint outlines of 19th-century shipping routes. These modern data highways, much like the trade routes are not built for universal connected but for strategic advantage. They connect powerful economic hubs in the Global North, while often bypassing or merely extracting from the Global South. ...