Digital colonialism

This strand develops from the ideas within ‘Fauxtography’, which examines how images become collective resources through which people perceive the world and its crises. 

‘Digital Colonialism’ considers the topographies of digital and networked images and how systems of power are mirrored within their structures and dissemination.

Information asymmetry is power asymmetry. If “data is the new oil” in the 21st Century, then internet users are the raw earth from which this oil is extracted; a commodity to be exploited for the benefit of the oil barons. In this, there is at least some equity amongst users around the world: the parity of the powerless. Except that isn’t accurate …
When does the human need to leave the image? And what takes his/her place? How can one attempt to image a life severed by representation, and who has the ethical right to attempt such an aberrant, aniconic distortion?