Islamic Counter-Racist Thought Food #78

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Consider this:

Empire [i.e. the globally operating system of White Supremacy (Racism) under late colonial modernity] has mostly rescinded territory, only to continue its operation at the level of infrastructure, maintaining its power in the form of the network.

Extract taken from James Bridle’s New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London: Verso, 2018).

Now consider the following comment on the above:

If the infrastructure of the internet is operated by the vestiges of an empire [i.e. the globally operating system of White Supremacy (Racism) under late colonial modernity] invested in the exploitation of the greater part of humanity, how we can we expect the internet to work for that same humanity?

[F]uture elaborations on Bridle’s work will have to reckon with this question he refuses to address: whether the only way to save the internet and the planet is to actually seize its infrastructure — every last data center and switchboard — from the powers that be so that it can finally serve egalitarian, socially responsible purposes. Or, failing that, whether it would be in the best interest of humanity to destroy the internet entirely.

Extract taken from Thomason, J. (2018) “Is It Easier to Imagine the End of the World Than the End of the Internet?” The Intercept, 24 November 2018. Available here.

Peace