What's happening with data and AI is the seizing of the assets of the planet, but in a very particular form, which is the seizing of an asset that hadn't fully been captured before, which is human life.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks.

And this week, my guests are Ulysses Mejus and Nick Coltrory.

Ulysses is a professor of communication studies at Sunni Oswego,

and Nick is a professor of media communications and social theory at the London School of Economics.

They're both the authors of Data Grab, the new colonialism of big tech, and how to fight back,

and also of cost of connection.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Ulysses and Nick back in May when we were both speaking at Republica in Berlin. And at the time, I had actually already read their book, DataGrav. So, you know,

it wasn't something that just came on my radar at that moment. And it was really great to meet them

because I really enjoyed the book personally. You know, I think that we see a lot of comparisons

about particular historical frameworks that what's happening with

the tech industry fit into. But when I read their explanation about data colonialism and how they

see what is happening today as this extension of this colonial relationship, that really

resonated with me, particularly the way that they described it throughout the book. And so I knew I wanted to have them on the show. It was just finding the right time with,

you know, their schedules and my schedules in order to do it. So I was thrilled that we could finally

set this up and discuss the book, discuss data colonialism, what it means and the wider implications

of this concept for both how we think about technology, but also,

you know, how we use it as users and what this way of developing digital technology and

digital platforms means for human society itself. So in this conversation, we explore many

angles of that, right, from what it means on the platforms itself, how these platforms are

constructed in this particular way, to the more infrastructural angle of it as these things kind of

actually become physical, are part of the land and are really transforming parts of our communities

...