Under the title 'Decolonize technology', at the beginning of March, SETEM Catalunya promoted a new edition of the Mobile Social Congress in the city of Barcelona. More than 400 participants positioned the event as a key space for critical reflection on technology and the promotion of alternatives based on global justice. "Today, the Mobile Social Congress is more relevant than ever. We see how large corporations are not in favor of protecting human rights and the digital rights of users," said Clàudia Bosch, advocacy technician at SETEM Catalunya. The eleventh edition of the Mobile Social Congress included a series of talks, a free software workshop for managing organizations run by SomNúvol at the Canòdrom and a critical evening with testimonies of the impacts of the plunder of natural resources in the global south, Proyecto Una, No m'importa, the monologist Alba Segarra and the musician Bigwé at the Nau Bostik. "With the slogan 'Decolonize technology', we wanted to emphasize the need to analyze social impacts and environmental impacts. Also, analyze how colonialism continues to prevail in global technology chains. These mark how technology is designed, marketed and used. In essence, global chains mark who wins and who loses with this current technological model," Bosch pointed out.
Specifically, four interesting talks were organized at the Canòdrom facilities. The first conversation dealt with how to create an anti-racist, decolonial and feminist artificial intelligence with Youssef M. Ouled from the AlgoRace collective, who insisted on the biases of technology. "Racism manifests itself in different ways within technology. On the one hand, from a more individual perspective, with the people who design, develop and implement the same technology, which causes their racial, gender or class biases to be transferred to the tools and generate a discriminatory effect. On the other hand, with the political logic, that is, beyond this individual bias of people, when certain technologies are implemented in police or judicial areas, such as, for example, when border technologies are put into practice that seek to limit the mobility of people from the south to the north," explained Youssef M. Ouled, journalist, researcher expert in racism and coordinator of the AlgoRace collective. The second talk then focused on the relationship between technofeudalism and food sovereignty with Mónica Vargas from the Grain organization, who denounced market control and the situation of farmers. The third presentation then presented various communities fighting against data centers with expert Paola Ricaurte, the Tu nube seca mi río group and Ecologists in Action, who discussed the effects of these spaces on people and the environment. Finally, the last dialogue featured several activists and journalists and discussed the links between technology, colonialism and the resistances that are being built around the world.