Towards a Terrestrial Internet: re-imagining digital networks from the ground up (2022)
The expansion of digital infrastructure is having material and concrete impacts on society and the environment. This phenomenon is rendering obsolete binary distinctions between the “physical” and the “virtual” worlds. Giving a step further in this discussion, the articles comprising this Cluster trace the emergence of an imaginary that approaches territory as an actor actively shaping the development and governance of the internet. What we call the Terrestrial Internet is emerging from Indigenous, Afrodescendant, feminist and worker groups in Abya Yala (Latin America) envisioning alternative imaginaries as digital infrastructures expand in their contexts. In dialogue with science and technology studies (STS) and Latin American critical thought, we argue that this imaginary conceives of the internet as an earthly development whose material expansion is spurring novel human and non-human alliances and frictions, as well as colonial forms of territorial occupation. The articles that make up the Cluster were invited to respond key questions in times of terricide: What are the power dynamics of the disputed spaces that support the internet? What are the effects of such dynamics on territories and their various ways of life in Abya Yala? What imaginaries are put in motion as a response?
Marcela Suárez Estrada & Sebastián Lehuedé (2023) Towards a Terrestrial Internet: re-imagining digital networks from the ground up, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 5:1, DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2022.2139913