Towards a Terrestrial Internet: re-imagining digital networks from the ground up

Abstract

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? The emergence of the internet was accompanied by claims on its alleged “cyber” or “virtual” character, as if it would be a realm different from the “physical” world. However, phenomena such as the increasing extraction of lithium to build so-called “green” technologies (Peña 2020) and disputes over the vast volumes of water required to cool off data centers (Hogan 2015; Hu 2015) are rendering such deterritorialized imaginaries obsolete. The concrete and material character of the aforementioned phenomena were overlooked in initial accounts of the impact of the internet, but are becoming now increasingly relevant for understanding the range of inequalities and politics associated with the development and expansion of the so-called network of networks. Looking at the materialization of these trends in Abya Yala, this Cluster develops the Terrestrial Internet imaginary by drawing on a series of articles chronicling varied