Break the Digital Monoculture

The planetary digital infrastructure is maintained and controlled by a few tech-conglomerates. Platforms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Yandex and Tencent have become so powerful that they control entire supply chains and now have almost exclusive reign over the digital space. Platforms such as these have become instrumental for the way billions live their daily life all across the planet. 

Big Tech has transformed our digital environment into a digital monoculture. Monocultures are the industrial-sized growth of single plants or organisms which poses a threat to our planet's biodiversity. Digital monoculture is the monopolization and homogenization of our digital environment by Big Tech. We have been locked in a closed ecosystem, or a walled garden, where a few platforms control all content and advertisements. Every application needs to be inserted or monetized and every digital institution should operate according to a similar profit driven business model.

We need to break the digital monoculture and challenge Big Tech in their relentless drive to transform our digital environment in its own image. We can change the narrative of our digital future and build a pluriform and inclusive digital environment, rooted in the multiplicity of local and transnational communities. 

In the next coming weeks, we will publish various interviews with artists, technologists, activists and academics. We have asked them all about their work and our main question: how can we break the digital monoculture and build a more humane digital future?

The interviews will feature Morehshin Allahyari, Kanta Dihal, Neema Iyer, Jason Edward Lewis, Nani Jansen Reventlow and spideralex, among others.