Although slavery and colonialism may seem far removed from the 21st century and our current lives, there have been growing concerns about digital colonialism. With Ingrid Riley of Silicon Caribe and Matthew Cowen of dgtlfutures, we start a conversation on digital colonialism in which, among other things, we discuss: what digital colonialism is and why we ought to give it greater attention; what is happening in the Caribbean tech entrepreneurship space and how it has evolved over the years; and how the region can better navigate and change the narrative that often fosters digital colonialism.

 

This episode is also available on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music!!

Digital colonialism is most likely a concept few of us have encountered, but it is a concept that has been gaining prominence as we become more dependent on technology and the power dynamics and imbalance between the big tech firms, in particular, and consumers are becoming increasingly evident.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, colonialism is “The principle, policy, or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country and occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” As current and former British, Dutch, French and Spanish colonies, Caribbean countries have deep experience with the trauma of colonialism, the impact of which still persists nearly 200 years after Emancipation.

Globally, we now find colonialism – the capturing of land, the oppression of people and the eradication of the existing culture and societal structures – abhorrent, it still occurs especially in the digital space where is more insidious and pervasive. According to a 2019 paper on the subject, digital colonialism was examined in Africa where

“largescale tech companies extract, analyze, and own user data for profit and market influence with nominal benefit to the data source. Under the guise of altruism, large scale tech companies can use their power and resources to access untapped data on the continent.”

An area that appears to be fostering digital colonialism is social media. Through the activities and content social media users generate, the platform owners exploit users and their data for profit with little or no benefit to users. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another area that is being highlighted as a source of exploitation, as it requires large volumes of data to train the models.

In both the social media and AI situations, it could be argued that users access these platforms for free, so allowing the platform owners to use all of the data that can be extracted from the platform is a fair exchange. However, very quickly a gross imbalance in the value, influence and power of the platforms versus their users, which when coupled with the onerous terms and conditions of use of the platforms, tends to point to exploitation under the guise of altruism.  

 

Introducing our guests

Ingrid Riley is an award-winning Digital Media Entrepreneur, Caribbean Tech Maven, Syndicated Tech and Business Blogger Podcaster, and Event Producer. She is the Co-Founder of Rebel Ventures and the Founder of SiliconCaribe, the highly regarded digital media brand that kickstarted the tech start-up scene in Jamaica, which also has been influencing the growth of the Caribbean tech ecosystem.

Matthew Cowen  is an IT Specialist, Researcher and Digital Analyst, who specialises in ICT in the Caribbean region. He is also the Founder of dgtlfutures, a consulting firm that helps small businesses across the Caribbean develop and implement their digital transformation strategies. He is also the author of The Future is Digital newsletter and is based in Martinique.

 

Insights into our conversation

Imagine the scene: two people of African descent and a British Caucasian, all based in the Caribbean, having a conversation on digital colonialism, who no doubt, are aware of the calls for reparations for slavery in the region, as well as the geopolitical dynamics that have resulted in terms such as developed and developing countries, Global North and Global South, to name a few.

The conversation starts with a discussion of the impetus for suggesting digital colonialism as a subject, which was Worldcoin and the exploitation reported in Southeast Asia and Africa. Worldcoin uses iris biometrics and has been accused of taking advantage of consumers and using unsavoury practices to increase its user base and secure the iris biometric data.

However, the conversation quickly covers a lot of ground and raises several issues that could only be highlighted in an hour-long session. However, the ground has been set for us to have follow-up discussions, thus to continue to explore this uncomfortable issue.

 

We would love to hear your thoughts!

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Also, if you or a member of your network is interested in joining us for an episode, do get in touch.

Let’s make it happen!

 

Select Links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode, or otherwise, might be useful:

 

 

Image credits:  I Riley;  M Cowen; Gerd Altmann (Pixabay);  lalesh aldarwish (Pexels); Tasha Jolley (Unsplash); Pixabay (Pexels)

Music credit: The Last Word (Oui Ma Chérie), by Andy Narrell

Podcast editing support: Mayra Bonilla Lopez