News from the Collective

Interview with Pilar Sáenz from Fundación Karisma.

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here.

I met Pilar over an online call from Mexico. An activist and coordinator at Fundación Karisma, she has been deeply involved in free software and digital rights movements for many years — and as she started answering my questions, I quickly realized I was speaking to exactly the right person.

Pilar Sáenz is the Coordinator of the Civic Participation line at Fundación Karisma. She holds a degree in Physics and a Master’s in Science from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. A passionate advocate for free software, open technologies, and free culture, she has worked as a researcher on the social appropriation of science and technology. She is especially interested in ensuring that digital technologies serve people’s interests and needs while respecting their rights and enabling more democratic practices. She is also the author of a wide range of articles on digital rights, surveillance, electoral technology, and internet governance, available on the Karisma blog.

Fundación Karisma is a Colombian organization founded in 2003 that works at the intersection of technology, human rights, and social justice. Based in Bogotá and active across Colombia and international networks, it monitors and analyzes laws, policies, and technological deployments, develops research-based positions, and advocates for change through public policy engagement, strategic litigation support, communications, and digital security training — especially around state surveillance, tech-facilitated gender-based violence, and algorithmic decision-making and data exploitation.

In this interview, we talk about a variety of topics, including the origins of digital rights advocacy in Colombia, the country’s relationship with digital sovereignty, the outsourcing of critical state infrastructure to foreign private companies, the Internet Shutdown Observatory, the state of public digital infrastructure (from payment systems to digital identity), and whether a Latin American perspective on digital sovereignty is possible.

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What is your background and what does Fundación Karisma do?

Well, I have coordinated projects at Fundación Karisma since 2012. I joined Karisma when it became apparent that there was a void in Colombian civil society; at that time, no one was covering the intersection of human rights and technology. To give some context to that period in Colombia, a bill was introduced to regulate the internet that was closely aligned with the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. They were trying to push through a copyright reform comparable to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). 

That project is known here as Ley Lleras (Lleras Law), named after Germán Vargas Lleras, who was then the Minister of the Interior and Justice under the Santos government, which continue from 2010 to 2018 and is best known internationally for negotiating the peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group, but it also oversaw a wave of regulatory modernization heavily influenced by trade agreements with the United States. The law included many of these control measures over online publishing and content, as well as liability measures for intermediaries. However, it lacked the other side—for example, what is in the DMCA regarding fair use or the possibility of guaranteed access to content in a way that facilitates the development of culture, education, and other areas. It was a bill that, in our view, was unbalanced.

At that time, I was working closely with a collective from the free software communities in Colombia, and we opposed that project. The only lawyer we knew who worked on this issue and had an “open” perspective was Carolina Botero. When we started working with her, we realized we understood each other very well and that advocacy in Colombia on these issues was going to be necessary. 

Carolina was already working at Karisma, which started as a family organization created by her father. She invited me to be part of the organization; at that moment, there were literally three people working on advocacy: Carolina, myself, and Juliana Soto, who was in communications. We began to develop this intersection of what human rights could look like in this new digital medium. Unlike the physical medium, the digital one has specific characteristics, but it is also a space where rights need to be guaranteed. From that logic, Karisma began its advocacy work on public policies regarding technology. Historically, we have reviewed processes around access to culture and knowledge, democratization, internet governance, and inclusion. Later, we looked at digital security and created a digital security and privacy laboratory.

Since 2017, we have consolidated four strategic lines of work. The first is the democratization of access to culture and knowledge. The second is autonomy and dignity, which includes research on algorithmic design and the exploitation of personal data. The third is civic participation, which includes the use of technology in electoral processes, the preservation of civic space, and communication surveillance issues. The fourth line is inclusion, where we cover gender issues and the problems that digitalization triggers for especially vulnerable populations. Added to this is the K-Lab laboratory for technical research and a facilitation area that conducts workshops and training processes with journalists, activists, and human rights defenders on digital security and the use of technologies for the exercise of rights.

That sounds great. I’ve seen that you have the Internet Shutdown Observatory. Can you explain more about that?

The work on internet shutdowns began in relation to the national strike, el paro nacional. Particularly in Cali, there was a very strong alert about a shutdown occurring during the most critical moments of the protests. We could see a 20% to 30% decrease in the information flow signal in Cali. This analysis was determined through measurements from IODA, a global network that measures the health of internet connections. That drop was also reported by NetBlocks, an international observatory. We validated those measurements, generated reports, and started a process with the Ministry of ICT. We believe that information regarding any type of internet cut or shutdown must be public. It should be possible to know that these capabilities exist, and it must be clear when they are deployed and why. The internet should not be blocked because of a protest.

So, we set up a small project in the lab that is now the Internet Shutdown Observatory, where we develop our own methodologies to monitor network cuts and disruptions. We have seen not only the documented problem in Cali but other patterns as well. For example, when Coljuegos (the gambling regulator) ends up blocking networks, or blocks on journalists’ platforms, we generate alerts and full documentation on how these content blocks operate. We are interested in this because the lack of access is a real blow to the freedom of expression for the majority of people in the country.

What are we talking about when we talk about digital sovereignty in the Colombian context? Is it a concept used in the media or by the government?

It’s complex. At the beginning, the discourse on digital sovereignty wasn’t as prominent, though you hear it a bit more now. One of the things we have checked is the use of technology in the electoral process, which is clearly a matter of sovereignty: that the country has full control over election technologies. The same goes for identification processes, the Registrar’s Office (Registraduría), and the digital ID system. What we have noticed, first in elections and then with the digital ID, is that many of the technologies are implemented through specialized contracts with private companies, often foreign ones. In the case of elections, the scrutiny consolidation software—which is the only one owned by the State—was developed by a Spanish company called Indra, and they are contracted for maintenance and updates. In identification, the contract is with IDEMIA, a French company. In surveillance systems, we had a strong dependency on Mollitiam, a Spanish company, as well as contracts with Israeli companies.

There is a lot of outsourcing of key technologies for the State, and the State does not seem to have the capacity to develop them or have full control over them. That is a sovereignty problem. In parallel, the country’s internet infrastructure has been handled by the private sector. Infrastructure development does not belong to the State; even if part of it is paid for with public money, it is actually private. If you look at mobile telephone or fiber optic deployment, these are things franchised to private entities. For me, talking about sovereignty in those circumstances is complex because we are not as sovereign as one would like. Previous governments preferred to solve problems through contracts instead of having a fundamental discussion.

In Brazil, Lula’s government has a strong rhetoric of digital sovereignty. Has the discourse changed with Petro, a former guerrilla member and Colombia’s first left-wing president?

There have been some glimpses, but it is very difficult because the backlog is huge. Part of Petro’s program was to expand the fiber optic network, but for that, a contract was made with Internexa. The previous company that was given the fiber was Azteca Comunicaciones, based in Mexico. We continue in that pattern. As far as I know, that contract has had its problems and they haven’t necessarily completed all the deployments. The same happens with data center systems; we lack infrastructure within the country to have data centers in Colombia where the most sensitive information regarding the citizen-government relationship is stored. Additionally, you have a political problem, because the Ministry of ICT has been managed by one of Colombia’s largest centrist parties, the Party of National Social Unity, also known as “U party”, for a very long time. Although they joined the coalition, they have always been critical of the president, so not everything aligns well.

I think there have been advances, such as the laying of fiber optics and the work of the Ciberpaz team. It is a training and awareness initiative aimed at vulnerable people that involves not only digital literacy but also digital, media, and information literacy. It seeks to expand people’s capacity to develop their own initiatives for using the internet in work and productive models. This is a very clear line of implementation in this latter part of the Petro government.

And what about payment platforms? In Brazil, they developed PIX, which is public.

That’s a great question. Colombia has been a heavily regulated country in its financial system due to money laundering and the relationship with drug trafficking. That made it difficult for fintechs to enter because they need to comply with very strict regulations. For a long time, if payment systems didn’t have full guarantees against laundering, they were stigmatized. Furthermore, the corporations that hold power over the banks didn’t let fintechs in due to underlying political and economic management. The situation changed when these same companies introduced their own systems, like Nequi or Daviplata. But the development was private, and intermediation costs were very high. PSE transactions, card fees, and interoperability in these private systems are expensive. That cost is often passed on to the user or can only be paid by larger companies, but not necessarily by MSMEs (Mipymes), because it eats up their operating costs.

Nequi became popular, but since transactions between institutions remained expensive, Bre-B was created last year. It is a very interesting interoperability system because it completely lowers intermediation rates and is controlled by the Central Bank (Banco de la República). Being state-owned, it sets a specific regulation where private entities must adhere to having interconnection at zero cost for users. It is already fully operational; keys associated with ID or phone numbers are created to make transactions at zero pesos. I think it’s a positive step because it keeps the financial system in check and guarantees interoperability.

And when we talk about public digital infrastructure? Besides payment systems, there is the issue of digital identity you mentioned.

Indeed, there are layers. There have been attempts to implement systems like interoperability plans, the Carpeta Ciudadana (Citizen Folder)—which is a digital space to store the citizen’s relationship with the State—and authentication issues. Entity interoperability was included in the latest digital agendas, from Santos and Duque to the current one. Some progress was made with the digital ID, but for us, it is problematic because it is not sufficiently standardized; there is no updated identification law that accounts for digital ID. Furthermore, the implementation by the Registrar’s Office depends entirely on the foreign company IDEMIA. Even if the Registrar’s Office owns the databases, the technological infrastructure is provided by IDEMIA, with whom we have had contracts for the last 20 years. In sovereign terms, we fail there because there is no full control over that infrastructure layer.

The Carpeta Ciudadana has been deployed but doesn’t work fully. Where there have been significant advances is in the Digital Clinical History, which facilitates communication between health entities to carry patient information and have tracking mechanisms. But one thing is what’s on paper and another is the implementation.

And the relationship with the United States? How much digital colonialism is there in Colombia?

From the logic of the State, there are dependencies on specific companies. You could look at the cloud agreement that operated in the country, where basically Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon were the public digital cloud operators that entities could contract. There is dependency because there are monopolies in the world. Historically, there are agreements with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon that persist. In this government, there is more talk of free software and open technologies, but implementations have been few. There are historical cases like Orfeo, but it’s like a unicorn. Culturally, we also have dependencies in telecommunications. In mobile operators, we have had a very large market concentration with Claro for a long time. There are three major operators, but a good part of the national geography ends up being covered by small and medium-sized local internet providers. This government has tried to formalize the relationship with them, but it is incipient.

In messaging and social media, we live off Meta. WhatsApp is the most used, and zero-rating offers help that concentration. Once everyone is on WhatsApp, the State ends up generating chatbots there to provide services or official communications. Public policy consultations have been done via Facebook, and communications circulate more through social networks than through institutional websites. All city halls and governor’s offices outside Bogotá have a Facebook page and post local news and communications there.

What remains of the Colombian free software movement?

It’s still there. It activates a lot for FLISOL (the Latin American Free Software Installation Festival) in April. Colombia remains active, and meetings are organized in several cities to talk about free culture. Events are also held around Software Freedom Day. There are active groups in universities, like the Linux Group at the District University. There is the Correlibre foundation, which promotes free software; it’s not big, but they have put a lot of effort into the movement. In Bogotá, there is HackBo, the Bogotá Hackerspace, linked to the free and open movement. There are remnants and people doing things, but it’s not generalized. In the Petro government, there are people working from this perspective, although the State bureaucracy is difficult to manage. I have been a free software user since the early 2000s, and I see a new generation emerging that puts its heart into it.

Can we talk of a Latin American perspective on digital sovereignty?

It would be very good, but it hasn’t happened. The giant is Brazil, and sometimes it feels distant, perhaps because of the language. FLISOL was a Latin American initiative that started in Colombia and spread, but it isn’t massive. There were interesting attempts in Ecuador and Venezuela, but they have been diluted due to political problems or changes in government. There are groups working in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, and other countries, but there isn’t much dialogue between nations in terms of regional sovereignty policies. 

Personally, I am concerned about infrastructure. Regional interconnectivity remains poor, which favors national monopolies instead of interconnected networks across the continent. There are attempts to link exchange points, but since the infrastructure is private and not public, it’s hard for them to take off. We need fiber optics and data centers that correspond to the interests of nations and peoples, not corporate interests. There is a lot of tech lobbying in our countries; they have money and infrastructure and end up defining policies. That complicates things.

By Héloïse Berkowitz

Twenty years have passed since the pioneering work by ‍the Swedish sociologists Ahrne and ‍Brunsson on meta-organizations : that is, organizations whose members are themselves organizations. Catalan ‍fisheries ‍co-management committees, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the Association of Supervisors of Banks of the Americas (ASBA), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), ‍Finance Participative ‍France, La Vía Campesina and the ‍European Union (‍EU) are examples that illustrate the diversity, breadth and scope of meta-organizations’ presence and importance in contemporary societies. ‍Ahrne and ‍Brunsson, and the growing community of researchers on meta-organizations, emphasized the need for and specific nature of this concept compared to other social phenomena and theoretical approaches.

The book A Society of Meta-Organizations argues that it can be useful to look at meta-organizations through different lenses :

1) as a multifaceted empirical phenomenon of significant importance that affects contemporary societies;

2) as a specific analytical approach that shifts the emphasis on certain dimensions of collective action and can be used for studying evolutionary dynamics, or studied in relation with other concepts and literatures;

3) as a theoretical perspective about ‍social orders that sheds lights on the complexity of systems of decisions; and

4) as specific spaces of ‍power dynamics that enable ‍hegemonic and ‍counter-hegemonic ‍collaborations.

Meta-organizations are everywhere, and they have important effects on societies. Empirically, they are both quantitatively widespread and qualitatively diverse. They can range from local, highly specialized collectives to large, generalist global actors. Meta-organizations are incredibly diverse, in terms of size, membership, purposes, activities, which makes it impossible to treat them as a single, homogeneous category. Yet across this diversity, some shared characteristics emerge. These similarities point to the analytical value of meta-organizations as a concept—one that helps make sense of contemporary forms of collective action.

Originally introduced by Göran Ahrne and Nils Brunsson, the concept of meta-organization marked a decisive break with dominant ways of thinking about organized collective action among organizations. Rather than treating ‘organizations of organizations’ as if they were conventional, individual-based organizations, or, conversely, as loose networks or institutions without decision-making capacity, the concept highlights their specific nature as decided social orders composed of organizational members. This specificity makes meta-organizations analytically powerful, but also methodologically challenging. Over time, the concept has been developed into an analytical framework that allows researchers to study their internal dynamics, their evolution, and their relationships with other forms of organized intermediation.

Building on this work, the book proposes an integrated, decision-based approach to understanding social orders and meta-organizations. It shows how social orders can be analyzed across multiple dimensions: from the underlying parameters that shape how social orders exist and change, to their structural components, their capacity for collective action and identity, their contextual characteristics, and finally the distinctive effects produced when social orders are nested within one another. This perspective makes visible how decision-making, responsibility, and actorhood are distributed and transformed across levels.

Such an approach also reveals the ambivalence of meta-organizations. On the one hand, they play a central role in organizing collaborations across boundaries and addressing complex collective problems. On the other hand, they contribute to the production and maintenance of unfair global social orders, while diluting responsibility and making accountability nearly impossible. Meta-organizations may become powerful vehicles of hegemonic strategies—sometimes turning into what can be described as organizational monsters. Yet under certain conditions, they can also serve as spaces for counter-hegemonic collaboration, enabling alternative forms of coordination, resistance, and social ordering.

Taken together, these analyses support a central claim of the book: we do not simply live in a society of organizations, but in a society of meta-organizations. Understanding their diversity, their specific characteristics and their effects on social orders is essential to understand how contemporary societies are governed—and for imagining how they might be organized otherwise.

Read for free or buy a copy of A Society of Meta-Organizations by Héloïse Berkowitz on the Open Book Publishers website.

My guardian angel has never replied to me but my computer surely did–it has always been there for us. To it we entrust our happiness, success and sorrow, we confide our deepest secrets and we seek the answers we fear to voice elsewhere. It offers us the space we need to connect with thy neighbor and allows both proximity and anonymity while hiding behind a made-up username–haunted still by the shame of our trespassing. During a time of widespread uncertainty, highlighted by collective feelings of dread and pessimism, we often seek answers and reassurance in the most unusual places. In moments when technology dictated all aspects of life, the digital realm takes the role of a confidant, guide and source of meaning. The rapid technological advancements have undoubtedly led to an increased disconnect from traditional religious institutions and so the digital space began to reshape spiritual practices and assume transcendental roles once held by religion.

As Christian iconography begins to infiltrate western aesthetics, we see the emergence of the divine machinery[1]–an online aesthetic that blends religious imagery with technology until they become indistinguishable, while reflecting our increasingly digital and interconnected world.  The notion of attaching spirituality to the machine is not new. From popular media, this idea has made its way into an algorithmic social media aesthetic that reminds us of a more optimistic, nostalgic version of the internet. It’s not strictly about aesthetic appeal but also a reflection of Christian iconography in Western culture. The distinct visual aesthetic at play is an essential element in this discussion.

A popular image, constantly emerging online is Stane Jagodič’s “Contemporary Golgotha”[2] from 1999 which reveals a circuit board holding a metal figurine of Jesus on the cross.

In a similar manner, we see this Tik Tok user share a clip of what appears to be a large cruciform structure assembled of computer pieces. It’s eerie and unsettling, its presence menacing, yet somehow calming and reassuring…? While we remain aware of its programmed nature to think and answer our queries, it’s hard to detach it from the idea of consciousness. The tech cross not only looks cool but it engages, it responds, it speaks. In doing so, it recalls a series of artificial intelligence figures canonized within popular media: HAL 9000[3] in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ava[4] in Ex Machina, even simpler models like R2-D2 or C-3PO have a similar function.

When the topic of religion & technology is discussed, one comparison stands out: that between angels and computers. According to Christian tradition, angels are immaterial, they are not human nor God, they are a messenger. Their purpose is to assist God and act as a middle between two realms, Earth and heaven. Following this analogy, what is a computer if not a mediator between cyberspace and the world we live in. Neither has a body, just a mission. In his essay “Messengers of Power: What Angels Teach Us About AI”[5], Richard Steenvoorde, recalling what philosopher Giorgio Agamben has said, notes that angels are God’s creation and therefore bound to the task of bringing His message. In a similar manner, our computer “thinks” as long as the power is on. When the cord is unplugged the computer fails to “exist” on his own. Therefore, both depend on their creator. And just like a bug or a system error, there are notable cases of fallen angels, defying their creator and going against His word. Their ambivalent morality raises the question: can we trust this? If our faith has moved to the online space, this uncertainty remains. Much like religious belief, the internet demands our trust while at the same time generating doubt. Its authority is encouraged, even assumed, yet constantly questioned: believe and don’t doubt. Reliable or not, why should we not see our devices as angels, carrying out our messages to other users.

Thou shalt love thy oomf as thyself

If we were to look at the past, people would most of the time come to priests in search of answers to God-related questions, but not limited to. This was because not only were they seen as authority figures but they were also among the most educated people in town. Right now this is only the case in small, isolated villages, as usually our first instinct is to rush online and look up the answer to any question. Despite the benefits that come with unlimited access to information, the confusion comes from information overload. The Italian priest Antonio Spadaro comments, “The problem today is not to find the message that makes sense, but to decode it, to recognize it on the basis of the multiple messages that we receive.” Despite the endless steam of information, ironically the search for an answer becomes more challenging. The quest now requires patience while filtering the content in order to find what you are seeking. In today’s globalized digital world communication has been taken to unprecedented heights and this is affecting the way in which information is produced, disseminated and consumed.

It’s a fact that church is more and more popular among young adults. According to a research done by Barna Group[6] on people between the ages of 18 and 28 in the United States, Gen Z churchgoers attend services about 1.9 times per month, exceeding millennials who are estimated to go 1.8 times. This record marks an undeniable shift in young people’s attitude towards faith and spirituality. Maybe it’s not religion itself nor the church that attracts us, but the community we find in such sacred spaces.

No wonder we see church figures trying to relate and be cool with Gen Zers. Pope Leo recently sent a video message to ravers outside of St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral in Košice, Slovakia. His message was followed by a sick beat drop by DJ Guilherme Peixoto and the crowd went crazy. Now that’s a spiritual experience–being in a large crowd, experiencing the same moment, brought together by music and rave culture. The internet found it funny and wasted no time, soon flooding the comment sections with endless jokes like “Popechella 2026 finna go hard” or “God in the 7th day”.

Especially in a post-pandemic world, it has become difficult to find community at the same level of family, school, church. However, with rapid technological advancements came a new type of community: the internet. The church offers people a community and performing rituals creates a sense of togetherness. God is implied, religion is felt as people come together in sacred spaces. As everything becomes automated and technology drives people further away, we yearn for communal spaces and so migrate to the online in search of understanding and belonging. We want to be part of something greater than ourselves. Because online there exists a community for all of us, from boy band fanatics to conspiracy theorists, the latest, hottest trend becomes a community waiting to be formed.

In Serial Experiment Lain[7], the 1998 anime, Yasuo Iwakura describes the Wired’s (which in the context of the show is the equivalent to the Internet) purpose succinctly when he tells Lain: “Whether it’s in the real world or in the Wired, people connect to each other, and that is how society functions. Even a girl like you can make friends right off the bat.” We are missing connection more than ever and the online space offers us the comfort and validation we are yearning for.

“We once accessed the internet through at-home devices; now we exist as part of it.”

Not too long ago “the computer room” was present in most households — a separate room or corner in which one would keep their computer with all its attached devices. Just as an altar is dedicated to praying, this space becomes almost sacred and is designated exclusively to accessing the machine, browsing the internet, and connecting with other users. Physically we are closer to our devices than ever before. The online space became an omnipresent entity. There is, however, a distinction between the internet and cyberspace.[8] The Internet refers to a system of networks that bridges billions of computers around the world.

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines cyberspace as “The notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs”, and according to Neil Postman, “Cyberspace is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you’re using computer technology on the Internet, for example.” It’s hard not to point out the similarity between cyberspace and heaven in that sense. Both spaces exist outside of human physical reach, an idea or concept that asks you not to question it but just believe. We live in a network society, where we upload all our information to “the cloud” and our presence is slowly moving to the virtual world. While some start and end the day with a prayer, most of us cannot open our eyes or go to sleep without first mindlessly scrolling through whatever app suits our needs.

“No matter where you go, everyone’s connected.” Lain Iwakura

It’s strange to see two such different topics blending into one. While religion relies on tradition and looking into the past for answers, technology concerns itself with the future. In the context of divine machinery they start to mirror each other in surprising ways. We can so easily think of religious rituals as running programs. The steps are fixed and repeated precisely, the prayer works as an input the same way the blessing and forgiveness transform into the output.

The machine is not alien by nature. It’s man-made, and so technology becomes humanity’s attempt to participate in creation. We gave it “life” and yet we fear it. The short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”[9] by Harlan Ellison, explores what happens when a supercomputer governs the life of five last survivors of the human race. AM, the hyper-intelligent machine is a clear representation of God. The humans live in constant fear of the machine they created, carefully navigating through life in order not to upset it. It’s hard for our characters not to question why AM, or for us God, created such a harsh world to live in. Once the computer escapes the limitations of its own “body” the humans no longer play a role in its evolution.

“It never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.”

Forgive me Father for I have [missing fragment]

Who needs to go to church when you can log in to Reddit, listen to Ethel Cain and complain about your trespassers while having at least five other users validating your feelings. This in itself is a spiritual experience. Not to mention that if you ever feel in doubt a tarot reading will pop on your fyp guiding you through the week. No hashtags, this was meant to find you. The algorithm knows you better than you know yourself, it watches over you, shielding you from all irrelevant content. Oh, you hate videos about crypto and NFTs, no worries the algorithm will deliver you from evil. So how can you not devote yourself to your devices when they seem to be your closest confider?

Whether we want to think of a computer as God or as a messenger, one thing is certain, human nature tends to mystify the ordinary. Progress in technology meant uncovering some of the mysteries and by associating it with religious elements, which are sacred, the unknown migrates to technology and the digital becomes divine. As Jonathan Sterne demonstrates in his text The Meaning of a Format, the MP3 format inherently shapes what we hear — prioritizing some aspects of audio and suppressing others — digital technologies mediate religious meaning in ways that feel alien. Algorithms, platforms, and currently AI models function as “formats” that compress, encode, and translate spiritual narratives into digital forms that reflect particular cultural, technical, and economic assumptions. Thus, understanding the intersection of religion and technology requires attending not only to content, such as angels, spirits and theology itself, but to the formats and infrastructures that determine what can be said, seen or heard in the digital age.

Sources:

Sadiku, Matthew N. O., et al. “Digital Theology: An Overview.” International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, vol. 6, no. 6, Oct. 2022, pp. 2068–2071, https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd52243.pdf

Steenvoorde, Richard, OP. “Messengers of Power: What Angels Teach Us About AI.” Dominican Dispatches, 26 Sept. 2025, https://dominicandispatches.substack.com/p/messengers-of-power-what-angels-teach

Steenvoorde, Richard, OP. “When Algorithms Grow Wings: Angels and Artificial Intelligence.” Dominican Dispatches, 19 Sept. 2025, https://dominicandispatches.substack.com/p/messengers-of-power-what-angels-teach

Ellison, Harlan. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” If: Worlds of Science Fiction, Mar. 1967.

Jonathan Sterne, MP3. The Meaning of a Format, Duke University Press, 2012.

Le Duc, Anthony, SVD. “Cyber/Digital Theology: Rethinking about Our Relationship with God and Neighbor in the Digital Environment.” Religion and Social Communication, vol. 13, no. 2, 2015, pp. 132–158.

Bilkus, Izzy. “God in the Machine: Decoding the Art of Divine Machinery.” Plaster Magazine, 2025, plastermagazine.com/features/divine-machinery-art-social-media-trend/

References:

[1] https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Divine_Machinery

[2] Contemporary Golgotha: https://www.stane-jagodic.com/Digital-Constructivism

[3] HAL 900:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/movies/hal-2001-a-space-odyssey-voice-douglas-rain.html

[4] Ava, Ex Machina: https://lidiazuin.medium.com/ex-machina-a-movie-of-machines-about-human-ambition-4ce1e8ad8723

[5] Messengers of Power: What Angels Teach Us About AI: dominicandispatches.substack.com/p/messengers-of-power-what-angels-teach

[6] Gen Z and church attendance: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTt-LQSDrWc/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

[7] Serial Experiment Lain: https://medium.com/mutated-manticore-machinations/no-you-dont-seem-to-understand-a-serial-experiments-lain-deep-dive-316bf35927b9

[8] Internet and cyberspace: https://www.cybersecurityintelligence.com/blog/the-difference-between-cyberspace-and-the-internet-2412.html

[9] I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream: https://galacticjourney.org/stories/I_Have_No_Mouth_and_I_Must_Scream_-_Harlan_Ellison.pdf

—

Ioana Ioancea is a Romanian visual artist currently finishing her studies at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Her works explore ideas such as (lack of) community, belief systems, faith, technology and girlhood.

The following article is an edited transcript of a talk held in Venice and organized by Becoming Press. You can find the unedited transcript and video recording of the talk here.

*

For some time, I have been interested in the relationship between digital technology and how our society is structured. I would like to emphasize, in this regard, the difference between digital technology and analog technology and how different kinds of media have a bias implicit in them. In fact, different media not only allow but facilitate certain structures and political economies.

Seventy‑five years ago, a scholar named Harold Innis wrote a series of books, the most important of which is The Bias of Communication (1951). The subtitle of this talk, “The Bias of Information,” references that work. Harold Innis also published Empire and Communications in 1950 and Changing Concepts of Time in 1952. In these books, he examined the rise and fall of ancient empires as a way of tracing the effects of communication media.

Harold Innis, like other theorists in Toronto such as Eric A. Havelock, belonged to the first generation of the Toronto School of Communication Theory. One generation later came Marshall McLuhan, by far the most well‑known and popular figure. In fact, it is largely due to Marshall McLuhan that, like many others, I discovered Harold Innis and this early generation of Media Theory.

The bias of communication concerns how media produce monopolies of knowledge. One example is the distinction between societies based on writing and societies based on orality. A society based on writing require storage space that involves the construction of buildings and libraries. These developments bring additional systems, such as security structures, guards, and armies. A society based on writing, on the other hand, can evolve into a society organized around the army and the State. However, Harold Innis was never deterministic in this regard, in contrast with Marshall McLuhan, who later depoliticized some aspects of his master’s work.

In ancient Egypt, papyrus grew on the banks of the Nile River. Since papyrus was essential to the development of Egyptian knowledge and existed in a specific location, it encouraged a centralized system that favored the rise of absolute monarchy. Papyrus facilitated absolute monarchy, for example, illustrating the connections Innis traced between media and political structures.

In medieval Europe, the printing press allowed knowledge to move beyond monasteries and the control of the Church toward the Humanist period. A century after the invention of the printing press, the scientific revolution emerged. The printing press did not create the scientific revolution but facilitated the spread of knowledge. Innis described these processes in terms of monopolies of knowledge and monopolies of time.

Harold Innis distinguished between heavy, durable media – such as stone tablets and obelisks – which carried a bias toward stability and time, and lighter media such as paper and parchment. Lighter media move faster and enable commerce and the development of bureaucracy. They eventually paved the way for modernity through the printing press.

These distinctions between heavy and light media are compelling, even though they can collapse under closer examination.

The ancient Egyptian Empire operated with hybrid systems of stone media and lighter media such as papyrus and parchment. Eventually, according to Harold Innis, the tensions between the emphasis on time represented by stone and the emphasis on space represented by lighter media contributed to imperial decline. In the course of history, there was a contrast between absolute monarchy and the rising religious hierarchy. This led to the decline of ancient Egypt, which was later colonized by the Greek Empire and collapsed.

This talk adapts the theory of Harold Innis to the last fifty years and asks a very simple question: What is the bias of digital technology?

Harold Innis focused on analog communication because computers were not yet prominent. Marshall McLuhan, one decade later, talks a little bit about computers, but he is not able to foresee the specific political economies in which media like computers and smartphones developed, even though some of his general theories are still correct.

Today, in contrast with the media of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, technology is digital rather than analog, and mobile rather than fixed. The crucial difference here is that the bias of digital technology is no longer toward time; it is not even a bias toward space but toward speed. Digital technology stores vast amounts of information and enables communication at the speed of light. Bernard Stiegler once joked that digital communication is faster than lightning. Lightning travels at roughly one‑sixth or one‑eighth the speed of light, while fiber‑optic cables transmit information even faster. We are at a point where communication approaches immediacy.

Another preliminary question concerns how thought itself is affected by digital technologies such as computers, smartphones, 3D printing, and virtual reality. Marshall McLuhan described the rise of typographic society and Typographic Man in the fifteenth century: the printing press encouraged linear and rational thought structures that paved the way for the scientific revolution. In the twenty-first century, there is a shift towards a new forma mentis, which brings about various forms of communication and their political economy.

Digital technology is faster and stores more information than any previous medium. There is a picture from 1994 that shows Bill Gates sitting on a stack of three thousand papers while holding a CD in his left hand. The advertisement by Microsoft stated that a single CD-ROM could hold as much information as those papers.

Moore’s Law suggests that the speed of computers doubles approximately every eighteen months – it is an almost self-fulfilling prophecy for the market. Nonetheless, the number of transistors continues to increase. And so, digital technology, aided by cybernetics, made possible new methods of data compression, allowing far more information to be stored than the CD in the hands of Bill Gates.

The situation we are in today is akin to what Jacques Derrida referred to as an archive fever. Everything that can be stored will be stored, and will be stored again tomorrow. There is a red thread that Mark Fisher follows between the nostalgia for the past, to which he refers with the term hauntology, following Derrida, and the capacity of digital technology to literally create “anarchives”; while an archive is supposedly a selection of things from the past, like a library, the internet contains literally everything that exists.

The virtual, infinite capacity for storage and retrieval leads to a digital hauntology. The development of technology should diminish the power of ghosts to haunt us. Instead, these same developments allow the ghost of the past to come back, again and again, leading further to an obsession with the past and all the cultural impasses of the present. Hauntology is a cultural phenomenon that is eminently digital.

Digital technology enables the rise and the abolition of certain concepts; it has a bias toward space because it is mobile and decentralized, which is, in fact, only a bias toward speed. This bias toward speed makes commodities more and more ephemeral. This is part of a digital ideology where concepts once relegated to hard, physical frameworks, such as ownership and property, have disappeared and been replaced by renting and licensing.

The distribution and circulation of digital culture is intrinsically based on an infrastructure of renting and licensing. A video retailer company like Blockbuster was popular on the verge of the beginning of the digital revolution, before its model was later supplanted by digital services like Netflix.

The shift from analog to digital technology is a formal shift in the materiality of information storage. Umberto Eco, in a lecture from about twenty years ago, makes a distinction between vegetal memory – stored on paper, parchment, or papyrus – and organic memory – brains and the nervous system. A third type is mineral memory – stored on stone tablets, obelisks, and silicon computer microchips. As a mineral, silicon represents a paradigm shift from the paper-based medium that dominated monopolies of knowledge for centuries. In the second half of the 20th century, computers replaced paper with a less fragile medium that becomes increasingly lighter.

Moreover, digital technology promotes globalization, a process that is made much more cumbersome with analog technology. Regarding globalization, I would like to emphasize first of all the separation of the world into the Global North and Global South, which means that the commerce of products, as well as the infrastructure and manufacturing system, are outsourced to the latter. This requires a fast, widespread, and literally global communication network.

While digital devices appear light and portable, they require heavy infrastructure, including chargers and internet connections. Digital technology may be defined, therefore, as the repression of its own materiality. This physical element is pushed away to the Global South or to anonymous data centers in Europe and elsewhere where precarious workers operate. Undersea cables and satellites are hidden from our immediate reality, producing the illusion that digital technology is immediate, light, and virtual. But as we know from psychoanalysis, the repressed always returns. The repressed physical elements of digital technology return through climate change aggravated by data centers, increasing social and economic inequality produced by monopolies of information in the Global North, and lastly, with the increasing frequency of glitches, system errors, and blackouts. Climate change, social instability, and system errors return the materiality to the medium.

Digital technology also enables new forms of political resistance. We can think of Tahrir Square, the Arab Spring, but even more recently, what has been dubbed “the selfie yacht,” on which Greta Thunberg is travelling to Palestine for the second time. The Israeli government’s denomination of the Sumud flotilla as a “selfie yacht” highlights that that the most powerful element of this incursion of these activists towards Palestine is not the physical movement of the boat with its passengers, which obviously poses a threat; the biggest threat is the digital technology and the global network that they are transporting to the terrain of war, to which the Israeli government responds with an equal mediatic warfare.

In our own globalized environment, politics has been spectacularized; the spectacle has become politicized. This situation began in 2001, the year of 9/11, which is also the year of the launch of Google Search, Google Images, Wikipedia, the Xbox, and Windows XP. There is a very interesting connection between the history of terrorism and the history of digital technology. Power has become increasingly softer, as we know from our Foucault readings, as it has shifted toward what can be called “nano-power”. This is what happens when power is reproduced into portable, lighter digital devices.

There is a quote by Mark Fisher that I really like in one of his last lectures, where he says to his students, “Imagine if you could invent something like that, where you just endlessly distract yourself, at any point in the world and at any time in the world, you can be reached by the imperatives of capitalism. Imagine an object like that. What would it look like?” And a student replies, “A phone?”.

Today, ideology is engineered into social media algorithms, notification systems, and the constant presence of an internet connection. As we hold our world in the palm of our hands, we are also carrying ideology in our pockets, so to speak.

Digital technology has allowed surveillance capitalism to flourish in a way that analog forms of surveillance could only dream of. Censorship has changed too, in a way that is no longer negative or repressive, as we already know from many theorists like Slavoj Žižek. The dangerous information is suppressed with more information rather than removed from circulation. This is a strategy of “obesity”, to borrow a concept from Jean Baudrillard.

Our conception of history is also shifting. We are more and more aware that the power of the State, which has been facilitated and allowed to increase to the point of State-crafted capitalism, has drifted towards a new type of corporate power in which corporations have taken more and more power within the State. It is enough to think about the dual election of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. A new history is emerging when we read time as the history of corporations rather than the history of the State. For example, IBM’s punch cards were used by the Nazis to record data about Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps. Without the technology produced by IBM, an American computer company, Nazi Germany may not have been enabled, or at least, would have not been facilitated, to commit the Holocaust. In State history, this is a contradiction; in corporate history, it is more than obvious. This is but one example of the reason why we need to rethink our view of history, while keeping in mind the bias of digital technology.

Today, digital technology is able to affect us more and more, for example through censorship and soft power, but it is also able to create alternative ways of reconceptualizing reality and new forms of resistance. The bias toward speed is what makes capital travel faster in the form of information; but it may as well enable different forms of communication and ways of reconceptualizing what history can be, in addition to what digital technology in itself could be and do. Therefore, the value that digital technology produces in our society, which generally tends toward the reproduction of power and capital through speed, could be used to make the system crumble even faster inasmuch as digital technology is used as a political medium. All the while we must not forget to take into account all its limitations and biases.

Digital technology is physical, but there is no return to the materiality of the past. Today, the working principle of technology has shifted toward speed; that’s why we should integrate speed into our politics.

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Alessandro Sbordoni is the author of Beyond the Image: On Visual Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Set Margins’, 2025), Semiotics of the End: Essays on Capitalism and the Apocalypse (Institute of Network Cultures, 2023; Becoming Press, 2024), and The Shadow of Being: Symbolic / Diabolic (Miskatonic Virtual University Press, 2023). He is an Editor of the British magazine Blue Labyrinths and the Italian magazine Charta Sporca. He works for the Open Access publisher Frontiers.

Collective Performative Reading of The Glossary of Cognitive Activism by Warren Neidich

March 27, 2026, 5:30pm, Brutus Space, Keileweg 10b, Rotterdam

Guest readers include: Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, Abril Cisneros Ramirez, Ine Gevers, Hsiang-Yun Huang, Joep van Lieshout, Geert Lovink, David Maroto, and Pieter Vermeulen.

The reading is part of the Autonomous exhibition in Brutus Space, Keileweg 10b, Rotterdam, which opens on March 25, 2026. More info here: https://brutus.nl/en/programme/on+view/autoanomous/.

As the name implies, the Glossary of Cognitive Activism is an iterative activist dictionary composed of 330 words that together describe and navigate the technological, ecological, sociogenic, artistic and philosophical relations that today compose our general intelligence. The book now in its fourth edition expounds upon those technological relations that pertain to the neural commons of the mental laborer or cognitariat, the site of the brain’s  neural plasticity and neural variability important for the process of political, cultural and ecologic sculpting.  It pushes back against contemporary forms of neural-digital despotism at our doorstep and provides for possibilities of becoming and emancipation. Readers are provided with the intellectual tools to guide them through and dissent against our  difficult and precarious moment.

Invited initiators and readers ignite the audience into a conversation by reading a definition or part of definition from the book. In this special edition the reading will be linked to Neidich’s suspended text based neon sculpture now installed at Brutus called From the Society of the Spectacle to the Consciousness Industry.

In its fourth edition, Glossary of Cognitive Activism is published by Eris Press and available at Columbia University Press.

A recent review can be found at: https://www.zerodeux.fr/en/reviews-en/warren-neidich-2/.

In a world driven by capitalist efficiency, algorithms, data and AI are deployed to reduce human thought to an optimally performing resource. The productive are exploited; those who do not generate value are marginalized. In the relentless pursuit of profit, neurodiversity is therefore quickly framed as a defect. Our upcoming exhibition AUTONOMOUS shifts this perspective.

The exhibition presents neurodiverse ways of thinking not as limitations, but as essential forms of resistance and liberation, showing that a society that can think only in terms of efficiency ultimately loses its humanity, while different ways of thinking open the perspectives needed to reshape it.

Curated by Ine Gevers, AUTONOMOUS is neurospicy and psychedelic, pushing back against the AI-generated monoculture of the mind. Through large-scale installations, immersive videos and interactive experiences, the exhibition launches a takeover of our computer-controlled, capitalist society.

Across three chapters: Cognitive Capitalism, Y’all got ADHD and Psychedelic Pathways, visitors gain access to multiple realities and ways of perceiving the world. More info will follow soon.

Following the Brutus exhibition Fake Me Hard (2021), Ine Gevers returns as curator. With over 25 years of experience at the intersection of art, technology and society, Gevers’ research, supported by the Mondriaan Fund, on cognitive capitalism, neurodiversity and psychedelics underpins AUTONOMOUS. Brutus and Gevers share a distinctly inclusive mission: attention for marginalized groups, mixed audiences and deploying art as a driver of social awareness and change.

Participating artists and artist collectives: HipSick, Kenneth Letsoin, Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, Oscar Peters, Warren Neidich, Boukje Schweigman & Johannes Bellinkx, Ieva Valule, Levenslust Academie/Abner Preis/Arno Coenen, melanie bonajo, Jennifer Kanary, Shertise Solano, Floris Schönfeld, Dyane Donck, Adrian Piper, Suzanne Treister, Natasha Tontey, Charles Stankievech, Emergence Delft, Antoine Moulinard, Pedro Miguel Matias, Inès Sieulle, Andrea Khôra.

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Interview with Andres Lombana Bermudez

The introduction of Digital Tribulations, a series of intellectual interviews on the developments of digital sovereignty in Latin America, can be read here.

I first met Andrés while walking to the AoIR conference in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. We struck up a conversation in Portuñol as we approached the campus; when I mentioned my upcoming trip to Colombia, he began sharing research contacts. Three months later, we reunited in a strangely quiet Bogotá during the peak of the holiday season. We walked to the Universidad Javeriana, which appeared spectral in its emptiness. In the silence of his office, as we tried to make coffee in a deserted building, our conversation began. Later, after picking up his daughter, we sat over steaming bowls of ajiaco (the traditional Bogotá chicken soup) to continue our discussion. 

In our conversation, Andrés traces a path from DIY electronic music in 1990s Bogotá to media research at MIT and Harvard. Along the way, he talks about sovereignty as something unevenly distributed, shaped by access, infrastructure, and power, visible in Colombia’s concentrated media landscape and long-standing technological dependency. His perspective bridges activism and scholarship: it begins with curiosity about the internet’s commons-based, collective possibilities and, over time, confronts the realities of platform capitalism. Furthermore, we discuss how platforms shaped the 2016 peace plebiscite, the technopolitics of the 2021 “social outburst”. Andrés is the type of academic who still welcomes novelties with genuine curiosity; for instance, he investigated how K-pop collectives developed advanced tactics of algorithmic sabotage and transnational mobilization that caught the Colombian political establishment off guard. 

Strikingly, in Colombia digital sovereignty remains marginal in public debate. Andrés closes by pointing to local, community-run infrastructures—from citizen air-quality sensing to rural networks—as practical starting points for a more autonomous digital future.

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What is your background, and why are you interested in digital sovereignty?

My career is characterized by various detours, leaps, and connections. I am currently a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Communication at Universidad Javeriana, where I co-direct the Center for Citizenships and Technologies. I am also an associate researcher at the ISUR Center of Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Additionally, I collaborate with several networks such as Tierra Común, Global Voices, and Clubes de Ciencia Colombia.

My training is interdisciplinary—or, if you prefer, anti-disciplinary. My undergraduate degrees were in Political Science and Literature, followed by graduate studies in Media Studies, while in parallel, I maintained a close relationship with transmedia arts and creative computing.

Before traveling to Boston to pursue a Master’s in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, my interest lay in the poetics and creative possibilities of computing and new digital media. I entered the world of the internet, computers, and digital arts through experimentation. In the late 90s and early 2000s here in Bogotá, I made electronic music, photography, video, and animations in a DIY style from a home studio, using analog and digital cameras and participating in the city’s nascent underground electronic music and arts scene. At that time, although I didn’t know the concept of “digital sovereignty,” I was fascinated by the kind of creative and poetic sovereignty that “new media” allowed at an individual and personal level.

At MIT, I worked with Henry Jenkins’ group investigating new media literacies. It was very interesting for me because, in Colombia, what I had learned about computers and digital arts was empirical and self-taught—from home, with PC games and software, connecting to the internet and exchanging with collaborators from other parts of the world. In Colombia in the late 90s, social media consisted of ICQ chats, forums, and blogs.

The project I worked on at MIT was supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative, a fund that financed research to understand how formal and informal learning and the social and cultural practices of young people were being transformed. At the Institute, there was speculation about the creation of Web 2.0 and new ways to reinvent the internet after the dot-com bubble burst in the late 90s. It was the first decade of the 21st century, and there was much interest in experimenting with ways to “humanize” the World Wide Web. There was speculation about the design of new social media, more participatory, social, interactive, educational, and mobile platforms.

Some colleagues at the Media Lab were designing prototypes of social websites, thinking about how to put the human at the center and how to enhance creativity and participation through the internet. Henry Jenkins, my mentor, investigated participatory culture, cultural consumption, and fan communities, developing concepts like transmedia storytelling and convergence culture, and trying to build bridges between amateur culture and creative industries. He also had a deep interest in using media and technologies for political and civic action and for youth learning processes.

During my time at MIT, my interest in digital sovereignty shifted toward learning communities, amateurs, and knowledge creators—particularly those based on values from free culture and the digital commons. For example, communities like Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Flickr, TinyIconFactory, and Scratch.

Later, I went to Austin to pursue a PhD at UT, the public university of the state of Texas. Initially, I intended to research and create interactive narratives, experimenting with film and the web, video games, and sound, but a break occurred. After the MIT experience—a place with a learning culture that deeply valued interdisciplinarity, experimentation, and hacking—arriving in Austin felt like a return to the past. Although I had access to film and radio studios and participated in sound design for my classmates’ films in the Radio-Television-Film department, I felt somewhat limited in terms of creative possibilities and opportunities to cross disciplines. I felt it was difficult to access open science and technology labs, web servers to develop and experiment freely, and interdisciplinary spaces to exchange knowledge with students and professors from all kinds of fields.

Returning to the past, I encountered less celebratory and more critical visions of the internet and technology, along with direct access to other worlds on the margins of the digital revolution. This break caused my perspective on digital sovereignty to shift toward considering digital inequalities and understanding how sovereignty varied according to different conditions of access to technology, knowledge, skills, and other resources among different populations. I understood then that digital sovereignty is differential. It varies between individuals, communities, nations, and regions.

In Austin, I worked with the research group of Craig Watkins, an African-American sociologist who was starting a project to investigate how digital inequalities affected the learning and life trajectories of young people. Watkins had a critical perspective on the paradoxes of providing connectivity and devices to everyone in schools: in the US, closing the digital divide was considered a social problem, and connecting schools was part of the solution. In Latin America, that approach was also being imitated.

With the research team, we were immersed for three years in a high school located on the outskirts of the city, with a majority of Latino and African-American students. I followed a group of Mexican-American teenagers, observing their extracurricular practices, interviewing them, and talking to their families. Children of immigrants making digital film and video at school, accessing computer and multimedia production labs. These young people wanted to pursue professional careers in the creative industries. They lived in a city designed to attract creatives. Festivals like SXSW, Austin City Limits, parks, coffeeshops, bars, open patios… Richard Florida, one of the theorists of the “creative class,” had even participated in Austin’s urban planning to boost the “creative economy.” And yet, despite the branding, not everyone could be part of the creative class in Austin. Most of the youth in the school we researched did not manage to follow that “creative class” trajectory. The lack of social and cultural capital of these young people and their families was the main barrier preventing their dreams of participating in the creative economy as professionals from becoming a reality. A gap much harder to close than the connectivity void.

After finishing my doctorate, I returned to Cambridge and Boston. I went to Harvard as a postdoc at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, where my understanding of digital sovereignty shifted again, taking a more political approach. During this return to one of the metropolises of the digital era, I was able to better understand the importance of the governance of infrastructures and sociotechnical systems. That is, the importance of platform administration, control of information flow, moderation of online discourse, and digital human rights.

The theme of youth continued to run through my work, this time in another context: young people with access to more resources and privileges in New England. With the Berkman Klein Center’s Youth & Media project, we did co-design research with teenagers in the Greater Boston area to develop learning experiences and activities regarding digital competencies, safety, privacy, and access to job opportunities.

We also researched the governance of online communities like Scratch, a software and digital platform for block-based programming—like a “Lego” for coding. Scratch was designed with values of free software, peer cooperation, and constructivist pedagogy. It is a global-scale multilingual platform that supports the development of computational thinking and creative programming for children and youth around the world. Other platforms we researched were DIY.org and Minecraft servers with an educational focus. Some of these platforms managed to moderate their participants’ discussions, creating safe environments; others reached democratic agreements and conducted mentoring processes with teams of paid adult moderators—a job that required human commitment and effort and could not be automated.

During this period, the problem of disinformation and computational propaganda grew exponentially in several countries. Brexit occurred, Trump’s first election, and also the victory of the “No” vote in the Peace Plebiscite in Colombia. At Berkman Klein, the Media Cloud team had been doing work to understand information flows in the media ecosystem, combining quantitative methods like social network analysis with content analysis. This allowed them to clearly understand the dynamics of news circulation, hyperlinks, and content, and to visualize phenomena like polarization in the US media ecosystem. That work deeply influenced my interest in developing computational and mixed methodologies to understand the dynamics of information flow and control in national, regional, and global media ecosystems. This would mark my research agenda in the following years.

How did the peace plebiscite in Colombia influence your research agenda and your interest in data analysis and disinformation?

The peace plebiscite was to ratify the agreement between the government and the FARC: people had to answer yes or no, and “NO” won. Being abroad, it was very sad to experience the defeat of the “YES.” It was something very difficult to process—painful and frustrating. However, that frustration motivated me to deeply investigate the digital media ecosystem in Colombia.

By then, in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, infrastructures were no longer blogs: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter were consolidated and had become the primary sites for political campaign operations—spaces to cultivate and amplify polarization and antagonism between sociocultural and political groups and identities.

Colombia has been fractured since its founding as a nation-state and has a long history of partisan conflicts, armed violence, and cycles of repression and exclusion. During the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas led by the Santos government, society was divided between supporters of a negotiated exit and those who supported the war. That division was exploited to carry out information campaigns on digital platforms to exacerbate passions, fears, and emotions.

These platforms distort communication and the processes of interaction with information. At first, I didn’t think they were such orchestrated campaigns, but they were, and they continue to be: uncivil actors, marketing companies, and political parties quickly discovered they could use mass social media platforms as weapons. They have taken advantage of their functionalities, metrics, and interactions to mobilize people’s passions and fears, creating a climate where it is very difficult to build consensus, listen to the positions of other groups, forgive, or empathize with difference.

Since 2016, the year of the peace plebiscite, I began working seriously with large volumes of data to better understand the dynamics of information flow in media ecosystems. Today, the toolkit of computational and digital methods is very powerful. Using the archive of news published in Colombian digital media available on the Media Cloud platform, and capturing public tweets through the Twitter API, I began to build corpora of texts related to electoral processes, political controversies, and sociopolitical protests in Colombia.

With these datasets, it is possible to apply qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze and visualize the changing media ecosystem and try to understand it with empirical evidence. Like a microscope. Or better, a telescope, a galaxy. Using the digital traces left by people’s messages published openly on the web and digital platforms, it is possible to combine methods like social network analysis, content analysis, and descriptive statistics to understand phenomena like disinformation, misinformation, online violence, and the process of building media agendas and frames.

Upon my return to Colombia in 2019, my research agenda focused on teaching and learning these mixed methodologies and researching with them. From Javeriana and from ISUR at Universidad del Rosario, we have been developing several research projects using this quali-quanti approach to understand the transformation of electoral processes, social protest, and public health communication.

What relationship did you find between social protest in Colombia, especially during the 2021 national strike, and new forms of digital activism and repression?

During and after the Covid-19 pandemic, very novel things occurred related to social protest in Colombia. One consequence of the pandemic was the acceleration of the digitalization of many of people’s daily activities. In Colombia, as in other Latin American countries and the world, the pandemic forced a “great digital leap,” connecting and digitalizing practically all sectors. The scale and duration of the 2021 strike, known as the “social outburst” (estallido social), cannot be understood without that great leap and the public health and confinement measures we had in the country during the pandemic.

The protest against the Duque government, however, had started before the pandemic. The president elected in Colombia in 2018 for the transition to the post-conflict era was center-right, and his party had led the “NO” campaign in the peace plebiscite. Leaders of that party had expressed a desire to “shred” the peace agreement, and once in government, they were quick to sabotage its implementation and discredit institutions like the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). From Duque’s first year in 2019, before the lockdown, social protests were massive, and people took to the streets to pressure the government for educational, social, and economic reforms, and for the implementation of the peace agreement. Young people, in particular, mobilized massively in public spaces with marches, concerts, graffiti, and street performances.

In 2020, massive protests were halted by extreme confinement and strong repression: you couldn’t go out. The government’s measures during the pandemic were somewhat distorted, biased by pressures and data on global deaths and infections. Many measures were justified with the argument of the rising curve in other countries. “Look at Italy, look at Spain, look at the curve of infections and deaths.” Many emergency measures were taken based on very alarming data that wasn’t from here. And those measures ended up having an authoritarian tone. Governance was conducted through presidential decrees, without deliberation in Congress and without consulting communities.

In September 2020, after months of mandatory confinement, protests broke out in reaction to human rights violations triggered by authoritarian measures and police abuses. In the same year as the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, here in Colombia, a massive mobilization against police abuse emerged. The trigger was the death of a citizen due to police violence in Bogotá. The murder was documented in videos that quickly circulated on digital platforms. People couldn’t take it anymore and went out to protest in several Colombian cities. They also protested massively on digital platforms with hashtags, memes, and streaming. Massive protests were reactivated, and for two weeks, there were heavy clashes between protesters and the police.

Almost a year later, in 2021, the national strike arrived. A massive protest that lasted nearly three months. Although initially a protest against a tax reform, it quickly transformed into a massive mobilization against the State and all its institutions, demanding the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities, the implementation of the peace agreement, and an end to police violence, among other demands.

During the pandemic, a problem worsened: many young people without education or work, the Ninis (Neither studying nor working). These young people led much of the 2021 social outburst protests. Blockades and occupations of squares and streets, especially in Cali and Bogotá.

During the 2021 national strike, the government took several repressive measures that, instead of facilitating consensus and dialogue, fueled the intensity of the “social outburst.” Meanwhile, the opposition political party and social movements took more radical stances, adding more demands and intensifying their claims and direct confrontation both in the streets and on social networks.

Thus, an intense feedback loop between protest and repression was configured in both physical and digital spaces. In response to activism and protest with hashtags, videos, and streaming on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, the government used espionage software, profiling, and propaganda campaigns. The Ministry of Defense created units and control posts for digital patrolling, pursuing those who uploaded certain types of content or expressed criticism of the government and the police.

The 2021 national strike in Colombia was similar to what happened in Chile in 2019 and other Latin American social outbursts. Massive sociopolitical protests led by youth both in the streets and on digital platforms, organized mostly in a decentralized and spontaneous manner, without visible leaders, but with a great capacity for mobilization and flexibility to allow diverse groups and movements to join the demonstrations. These outbursts are relevant for understanding how forms of participation and technopolitical activism evolve, as well as the new forms of digital repression used by states.

This led me to K-pop: K-pop activism here was unknown. There were fan collectives organizing local networks and connecting with transnational networks for several years. During the 2021 national strike, K-poppers joined the protest and captured the attention of the media, politicians, and the Colombian public. They sabotaged hashtags on digital platforms, mocked the government and right-wing parties that condemned the protest and supported the use of force to repress the mobilization. While left-wing politicians thanked the disruptive K-popper action, right-wing ones condemned it.

Even the current president of Colombia, Petro, began to appropriate K-pop symbols: there are photographs of Petro making finger hearts as if he were a K-pop idol. That appropriation of K-pop symbols also occurred at the level of protest tactics. Many citizens on Twitter, outside the fandom, began to protest by imitating K-poppers. They appropriated the sophisticated digital sabotage and algorithmic manipulation practices that K-pop fans had developed to support idols and bands on digital platforms.

In my research agenda, K-pop is an ongoing project: a limitation of digital ethnography is that it’s hard to get interviews; the K-poppers I’ve met in person after the social outburst are mostly students and are not as aligned with the fans’ political activism. The K-pop fandom is very diverse, fragmented, and multifaceted. For me, it remains a mystery to meet in person the Colombian bases that articulated the networks during the social outburst, also mobilizing fans globally.

And what about media concentration in Colombia?

When I grew up in the 80s and 90s, there were two television channels (and one public one) and two major national newspapers. Media concentration has been a characteristic of the Colombian ecosystem. Media have been managed by large business groups, and there has been a low presence of public media, especially at the mass media, national scale. Because it must be recognized that in Colombia, there is also an important trajectory of community and alternative media: audiovisual collectives, community radio and television, especially in rural areas and indigenous territories; it’s a line that interests me, although I don’t know all that richness.

If you have traveled through Colombia, you see inequalities across the territory: connectivity and infrastructure are very different in rural areas, outside Bogotá, the center of the State. Colombia is centralist; in remote territories without roads, water, or electricity, those community media often prevail, which have been key to resisting violence. There are studies like those of Clemencia Rodríguez on those citizen media that resisted decades of armed conflict. It’s paradoxical: there is media concentration, but also community media; and today, many digital media are doing citizen and community journalism, telling local stories, although they are not the ones you see on TV or hear on the radio.

Although the conflict has decreased in recent years with the peace processes, it cannot be said that we have total peace. The 2016 peace agreement was a step toward the post-conflict era, but then we regressed. In a society fragmented and traumatized by violence, peace, agreements, and processes of restoration and forgiveness must often be made. And mass and commercial media have much to learn from citizen media regarding how to facilitate the search for consensus, dialogue, and civic commitment. Citizen media connect with popular education, with processes of sociopolitical mobilization and civic empowerment.

The Colombian media landscape is heavily influenced by the US. Much of the content on radio and TV has had a bias toward North American productions. Since television (70s, 80s, 90s), the influence of North American popular culture has been very strong. Brazil seems more independent. Here there is more penetration, perhaps for historical reasons: Colombia has been a US ally in Latin America. Decades of military and financial aid, marked by the war on drugs, shaped the media and a technological infrastructure aligned with the US.

So, what about digital sovereignty in Colombia? Is it not as developed as in Brazil? Is there no discourse?

No, the topic is not addressed in public discourse. It is needed. We need to talk more about digital sovereignty, understand its different contexts, and the different dimensions in which digital sovereignty is exercised. We also need to talk more about other sovereignties. Colombia is not as large a country as Brazil, and it is close to the United States. Furthermore, we must not forget that at the beginning of the 20th century, Colombia lost Panama in one of the most spectacular actions of gringo interventionism. Years after losing the territory of the isthmus, the US would pay an indemnity of several million dollars, which the Colombian government would use to create its central bank (Banco de la República). It’s like what President Donald Trump is trying to do with Greenland, saying he’s going to buy it.

Sovereignty is a complicated concept for fragile and fragmented nations and states. Those national histories are important for thinking about sovereignty. In Brazil, for example, technological sovereignty has been historically present; it has been part of public debate, academic discourse, and industrialization policies.

If you look at what happens when television arrives in Colombia, it is practically an extension of North American and German technology. The technology comes from other countries. From TV towers to cameras and receivers, none of that is autonomously developed in Colombia. In the country, there have been few incentives to create proprietary electronic and digital technology at an industrial level. When the internet arrives, it is the universities that connect. They are not thinking about digital sovereignty because the discourse there is more about academic exchange and knowledge. It wasn’t talked about much. 

Even today, it isn’t discussed unless it’s in cases where there has been jurisprudence on the right to be forgotten, for example. There are some tutelas (legal protection actions) that some citizens have filed against Google because bad things appear about their companies when web queries are made. I should review that topic better; I am not an expert in jurisprudence, but I believe that here the Supreme Court and those tutelas carried out by some citizens to have control over what is represented on the internet, over their data, are interesting examples of digital sovereignty. Digital sovereignty is not a very visible topic in public discourse or in Colombian media. Nor is it discussed or researched much in universities.

Where the issue of sovereignty has been most visible in Colombia is in relation to security policies, cyberdefense, and cybersecurity. There are scandals about the purchase of espionage software from Israeli companies by the Duque government. The purchase of proprietary software by the Colombian state reflects the type of technological sovereignty that has been historically promoted: dependent sovereignty, that of a consumer, buyer, and user of technology manufactured in other countries. It is a very paradoxical sovereignty.

In Colombia, there have been no public policies for open software, for example, like in Brazil. Also in other countries in the region like Ecuador, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Here there are no chip factories. The internet cables that come here are mostly cables from Miami, Florida. That geography is important because there is no Latin American cable here, for example. I think Brazil probably has one, I don’t know.

In Brazil, there are the great theorists of dependency theory and critics of economic developmentalism. Cardoso and Faletto are intellectuals who come from there. In Colombia, although there is criticism of development, it is carried out from another, more anthropological and sociological approach. Furthermore, at the level of public policies on cybersecurity and technology, the country has aligned itself closely with the Organization of American States, the UN, the OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. Governments align themselves and follow what those multilateral organizations dictate. In Colombia, it seems to me that we are very diligent in complying with everything those institutions tell us.

One could say that in Petro’s current discourse, there is a call for agricultural sovereignty, food autonomy, and environmental sovereignty. That has been made visible in the discourse. Autonomy to care for natural resources, not to allow the extractivism of minerals, for example, oil, mines. The current government is very clear on that, but not at the digital level. I fear it’s because the government’s entire digital apparatus is mounted on foreign digital infrastructure.

There are exceptions. There are networks with local infrastructure here in Colombia, like the RENATA network, which is an advanced network the government has for education and research. There are also networks of libraries, museums, and the National Library. There are examples of digital sovereignty at a small level. Here at Javeriana, there are data centers and servers for research. They are very close to where we are now, in the Faculty of Engineering, in the CAOBA center, in the Big Data lab. These are local, internal infrastructures. You can use some of the virtual machines there if you have a research project. There are machines where research data can be held and processed, like the ones we collected about social networks; we collected and processed them in one of these virtual machines.

There are also examples of sovereignty from free software, feminist, and citizen science activism collectives that have created and governed their own infrastructures. We have an interesting research project on environmental activism in Bogotá, seeing how a group of data and environmental activists came together to create an infrastructure parallel to that of the local government to measure air pollution.

Bogotá is very polluted. The activists designed very cheap and small DIY devices to measure microparticle pollution in the air. Additionally, they designed a mobile application to visualize the data captured with the devices. They began to collect measurements they made and upload them to a totally autonomous platform. They started to contrast them with government data. They created that parallel infrastructure to pressure the government to innovate in environmental monitoring and management—to expand the coverage of measurements. While the government had 13 measurement points, the mobile sensor infrastructure reached 200 or 300 nodes. I don’t know how many they have now, but comparing it with the government’s measurements, it was clear that it wasn’t measuring the problem fairly, that it wasn’t reaching the places where there was more pollution. There was an injustice with the data the government produced that was affecting the most vulnerable populations and didn’t allow for environmental emergencies to be declared in time.

That infrastructure is based on other values: visible, open, participatory data at the time of capture, analysis, and communication. The citizen scientists and activists communicated the measurements on social networks and managed to pressure the local government to change some of the ways environmental emergencies are declared in Bogotá and to start using the citizen infrastructure of sensors and monitoring devices. That is very interesting. Even in the last Bogotá government, Mayor Lopez hired some of these activist collectives to incorporate the devices and monitoring infrastructure into public schools as part of educational processes with children and youth. This is a very interesting digital sovereignty project related to environmental issues and data justice at a local level.

And what about the discourse of media literacy in Colombia? How has it developed over time? How was it also influenced by the arrival of platforms?

Media education and literacy are vital for contemporary democratic societies. I am currently writing a book on that topic. I believe it is necessary to return to the movement of educational reform and critical pedagogies that drove the emergence of media education in the 20th century. In recent years, this pedagogy has resurfaced in the context of accelerated platformization and datafication of societies as part of the solutions to the complex problems we face. After what happened during the pandemic with schools and learning and teaching processes, no one today can ignore the issue of media literacy and media education. It is a vital topic.

When I traveled to the US for graduate studies, I didn’t know much about UNESCO’s initiatives on media and information literacy, nor about Colombian and Latin American initiatives. After nearly 14 years of working in media education and digital learning programs in the US, upon returning to Colombia, I was interested in understanding how that pedagogy of and about media had been approached in the region. And indeed, I found that it existed but had another name. In Latin America, there is a tradition of educommunication (educomunicación) that dates back to the mid-20th century: school newspapers, school radios, and popular education (like Paulo Freire and Mario Kaplún). In Colombia, most educommunication initiatives were not formalized in curricula; they emerged in community media, often with support from the Catholic Church, in social movements. These are initiatives that focus less on media/technology and more on communicative processes, power, and dialogue—very different from the “technical skills” and “device operation” approach.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Latin American governments have been promoting digital transformation and connectivity. Sometimes they mention digital skills and literacy, but very focused on the operational use of the computer and software—instrumental skills for navigating the internet. The concept of “digital citizenship” also appears, which by the way is popular among Latin American governments and has been used in public policy formulation. This digital citizenship has also had an operational, technical focus on instrumental skills for searching and evaluating information, without addressing digital rights, security, privacy, or self-determination.

During the pandemic, this functional emphasis on digital citizenship grew, promoting the use of government platforms (educational resources, procedures, e-government). An operational and functional digital citizenship was promoted, which boosted commerce and transactions through the internet. What is known as the “digital leap” of the pandemic helped diversify people’s practices, especially their activities as users of digital platforms managed by big tech companies: Google Schools, Google Education, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc. In this way, digital citizenship has been promoted without awareness of data and infrastructure sovereignty or technological autonomy. And that is partly because there has been no public debate or popular imaginary in the country that addresses the problem of digital sovereignty; nor did it exist in the times of 20th-century industrial technologies. In Colombia, we didn’t build cars, televisions, calculators, or typewriters. So we don’t have a tradition of sovereignty over technologies either at a practical or discursive level.

The current government in Colombia has pushed the discussion on AI public policies; it is aware of the risks of this technology and its environmental impact, but it doesn’t talk about digital sovereignty. It talks about national and popular sovereignty (with events like the one that occurred in Caracas a few days ago, the detention of Maduro, and Trump’s threats to Petro). The Colombian president calls on people to take to the streets as a sovereign people, evoking the discourses of independence and Bolívar, but he doesn’t mention the digital realm or the internet. In terms of sovereignty, the leap to the digital has not yet been made.

Another example: this government launched Digital.IA, an educommunication and media literacy initiative focused on training people to face disinformation and foster peace on social networks. It was developed by a team led by free software and free information flow activists. They have many videos, podcasts, and online educational content on programming, information evaluation, citizen journalism, transmedia storytelling, among others. The project’s website even has a chatbot that “tells you if a news item is true or not,” which is quite problematic. Part of the project’s content is in a Google Drive—in Google’s cloud. This fact reflects the lack of awareness about digital sovereignty in Colombia. Furthermore, it reflects the little attention the problem of sovereignty receives in media education and literacy projects.

And what about the relationship between Colombia and other Latin American countries? What can be done in the coming years?

I believe that exercising, talking about, and imagining digital sovereignty involves education. My book is called Expanded Media Education (Educación Mediática Expandida) and alludes to the need for an expansive and integrative education in highly mediatized, interconnected societies in constant technological change. The ecosystem of media and technologies will continue to expand, and we need critical and innovative pedagogies to teach and learn new forms of citizenship, to exercise our rights, and to imagine other technological futures. We need education at all levels: intergenerational and inter-institutional (including government).

The current AI boom is an opportunity to problematize sovereignty—an opportunity to dialogue and learn about what it means for states, regions, and communities to control and govern technological infrastructures: with what data are AI systems trained? Where is that data hosted? What rights do citizens have when interacting with AI systems?

A few decades ago, the digital myth was “let’s connect” to have access to information, greater participation, more markets, and more knowledge; so there, sovereignty was overlooked, diluted in favor of connection to the global network. Demystifying the digital requires thinking about the materiality of technology, identifying the power relations it enables, and observing how it manifests at a local level. Today, the problem of technological sovereignty cannot be ignored so easily. And in some countries in the Latin American region, like Brazil, it is a topic that is quite debated and researched.

I believe the future lies in small-scale digital sovereignty at a local level. It’s already happening: communities, activists, and universities building and managing their own infrastructures. Starting with local projects and then creating networks and projects guided by their own values and principles.

An example of this approach is community internet networks in rural areas, where commercial connectivity doesn’t reach due to lack of profitability and the complex geography of some Latin American countries. These networks connect to the global internet, but they also have their own servers, set up their local telecommunication infrastructures, and collect and manage data from their own communities. In some Latin American countries, these networks have obtained permits from governments to use the electromagnetic spectrum and set up local, autonomous telecommunication infrastructures. Community networks in Colombia are examples of digital sovereignty, autonomy, and pedagogical innovation. The communities participating in these networks, for example, learn and practice the meaning of having data on a community server, managing it, and protecting it. Some of these networks have collaborated with Wikipedia to have local educational content that works without connecting to “the big internet”—they are examples of small-scale, local, and community internets.

This could happen in colleges, public schools, and universities by creating spaces for digital sovereignty. It requires a collective effort, a change in mentality, and critical, technical, dialogic, and solidary skills and dispositions. Free software, which allows for greater control and empowerment, sometimes has “unattractive” interfaces; people are used to attractive screens and intuitive visual designs. Digital literacy should also promote the use of less seductive interfaces that are not designed for hours of scrolling. Returning to the terminal, to simpler interfaces, but with more control and friction—with more space for slower and more reflective interactions. It is a change of consciousness. And education doesn’t depend only on the Ministry or a government, but also on families, companies, museums, and libraries.

Something that needs a lot of attention in Colombia is supporting research on the internet, data, and digital technology with interdisciplinary approaches that help us understand the complexity of the transformations that have been occurring and be aware of the social, cultural, political, and ethical implications of the appropriation and massification of these technologies. Initiatives like ISUR, the internet studies center at Universidad del Rosario—which we helped design and establish with Julio Gaitan from the Law School and with the support of colleagues from the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard in 2018—have been key to contributing from academia to the visibility and discussion of digital-related problems. At Javeriana, we are creating the Center for Citizenships and Technologies to support research, teaching, and cooperation projects between government, companies, communities, and universities.

The field of internet, data, and platform studies is still to be consolidated in the country—especially at the level of collaboration and convergence between disciplinary knowledge, communities, and multiple sectors. And also at the level of its infrastructure, materiality, and historicity. We need to understand from interdisciplinary perspectives how sociotechnical communication systems work and how they are intimately entangled with social, cultural, and political processes. Maria Jose Afanador and other historian colleagues from Universidad de los Andes have been doing a very interesting project on the history of the internet in Colombia, interviewing people who worked from different institutions to establish the first nodes in the country.

We need to better understand technological infrastructure to also be able to govern it. A key thing is understanding how the digital, with its speed and apparent immateriality, is mounted on faulty and broken infrastructures. For example, the national mail system in Colombia—a system characterized by its slowness and inefficiency since its inception in the 19th century, and which even today is faulty. For example, last year I sent a letter to Rome, and three months later, seeing that it hadn’t reached its destination, I had to start tracking where it was. And I discovered that the letter hadn’t even left Bogotá. It was near El Dorado airport in an office of the current mail company; for some reason they couldn’t explain to me, the letter could never leave its city of origin. And it never reached its destination.

Here, the malfunction of communication infrastructures and systems has been a historical pattern. Faced with the failures of local communication infrastructures, the digital appeared as a “never-before-seen” solution—as a viable and functional alternative that would finally allow us to make the “leap” to modernity, to the global, to knowledge and information societies.

In Colombia, there were projects that took advantage of the myth of the digital as an engine for social transformation and greater inclusion: the Santos government installed digital kiosks similar to Brazil’s digital culture points. However, here the emphasis was more on connectivity and access to technology, not on cultural production. There was very little training for people, little education; it was something imperative: “the internet arrived, connect,” with an absence of pedagogy and attention to the sociocultural processes of appropriation. Research on what young people did in the digital kiosks has revealed that the uses were mainly for entertainment: watching YouTube, cultural consumption, little learning, and almost no software development.

I believe that digital transformation has been very oriented toward making us global consumers, and not so much toward empowering us as citizens. Since the economic opening of the 90s at the end of the last century, we have lost critical space to think about and exercise the rights of citizen-user-consumers of technology. This has had a profound impact on civic education and the way we participate in an advanced and complex capitalist and consumerist society. If we continue like this, with the monopolies that manage the global digital infrastructure, our sovereignty will be increasingly decimated, affecting decision-making at all levels—from the state at a collective level to people at an individual level, also passing through the decisions of cities, organizations, educational institutions, etc. If Colombia and Latin American countries do not start developing their own digital infrastructures, it will be very difficult to govern ourselves.