DDC Online Assembly

Who owns our digital world, and what would it mean to reclaim it collectively?

Who owns our digital world, and what would it mean to reclaim it collectively?

Digital space & AI utilities our collective resources – in material infrastructure, environmental impact, labour and data exploitation – yet we are not given decision making power over its use. In the first online assembly, we will explore the infrastructure of the internet, the exploitation of our shared resources, andbegin our cross-sectoral call for claiming a digital democratic commons.

We will be joined by expert speakers Ulises Mejias, co-author of The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism and Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back. Sara Marcucci founder & director of AI & Planetary Justice, a collective of researchers, activists and artists exploring the planetary justice impacts of AI across its supply chain from mineral extraction, to energy & water usage of data centers, to end of life & electronic waste. And Iyo Bisseck, a French-Cameroonian media artist, interaction designer, and programmer, part of collectives like Dreaming Beyond AI, who proposes an Afro-feminist exploration of digital infrastructure through the design, study, and activation of collective servers conceived as relational space.

This is a space to contribute to the direction of our shared advocacy, to think together across borders, and to shape what comes next. Open to all, mark your calendar and join us.

Find out more & sign up here!

Read more about our speakers

Ulises A. Mejias is Professor of Communication Studies at the State University of New York at Oswego, and recipient of the 2023 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship. He is the author of Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and, with Nick Couldry, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2019). His latest book, also co-authored with Couldry, is Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (Chicago University Press, 2024). He serves on the boards of Humanities New York (a National Endowment for the Humanities affiliate) and the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. Dr. Mejias is co-founder of Tierra Común (tierracomun.net) and the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement (nonalignedtech.net), two innovation and support networks of activists, educators and scholars working towards the decolonization of data.

Sara Marucci is the Founder and Director of the AI + Planetary Justice Alliance, a global collective of researchers, activists, and artists committed to exposing and challenging the socio-environmental harms of AI systems across their entire lifecycle–from mineral extraction and labor exploitation to infrastructure, deployment, and waste. Through this work, she seeks to foster critical dialogue, collective resistance, and radical alternatives to extractivist AI futures.
She independently consults with public and private organizations on AI governance, with a focus on participatory, community-rooted approaches. She is Chair of the IEEE Committee on AI & Data Centers under the Planet Positive 2030 Initiative. She also collaborates with Privacy Network on advocacy and lobbying efforts around AI governance and digital rights, with a focus on influencing policy in the Italian context.
She started exploring the social implications of technology in 2017, and has worked on digital rights, data governance, and AI policy with institutions including the GovLab at NYU, the European Commission, UNICEF, IFC at The World Bank, Nesta, and the Open Data Institute (ODI). Sara holds an MSc in Data & Society (Distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Iyo Bisseck is a French-Cameroonian media artist, interaction designer, and programmer. They develop a practice that blends immersive digital environments, sculptural installations, animated images, and video games. Active in collectives such as Dreaming Beyond AI and Matri-Archi(tecture), they design online platforms that support cultural and activist initiatives. Their work critically examines the construction, use, and perception of archives in contemporary contexts, focusing on the materiality of the digital while exposing colonial continuities. Their research proposes an Afro-feminist exploration of digital infrastructure through the design, study, and activation of a collective server conceived as a relational space, an abolitionist laboratory, and a site of critical fabulation. Engaged in preserving and reinventing archives, Iyo weaves diasporic narratives through fiction and interactive media.

Resource List

DDC Assembly handbook
https://oneproject.org/how-to-make-ai-serve-the-public/

Data colonialism article -> https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/IN5390/h22/readings/couldry—mejias-%282019%29.pdf

Mejias, U. A. (2023). Sovereignty and Its Outsiders: Data Sovereignty, Racism, and Immigration Control. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WJDS/3.2.7

data colonialism explained:
How Big Tech Steals Our Lives, video by YouTube influencer Andrewism. Sept 4, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmX61zJLjcs

Review. Datenraub: Sind Praktiken der Tech-Giganten kolonialistisch? Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany). May 31, 2024.
https://www.br.de/nachrichten/kultur/datenraub-sind-praktiken-der-tech-giganten-kolonialistisch,UE4K1e0

Reading list of AI & Planetary Justice https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNxEup7ooezIFcsxvumkHh7R7GnwBSU3OkIpiRvQqrw/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.gt9vxf3q3a9k

Weaving Liberation