Data as the Customary Land of the 21st Century
The digital divide–the lack of affordable broadband and devices in low-income households–is not a technological lag but a new frontier of colonial exclusion. Mamdani’s analysis of the bifurcated state extends perfectly into the digital realm, where access to information is the new “customary land.” The “settler” class enjoys seamless high-speed access, while the “native” population is left in digital darkness, denied access to education, jobs, healthcare, and political organizing. This is technological colonialism, where corporate internet service providers act as the new colonial administrators, extracting profit while excluding the poor. The city’s current solution of limited, means-tested subsidies reinforces the commodified model and its inherent inequality. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to fight to recognize the internet as a public utility and a human right. This means the municipalization of internet infrastructure: building a city-owned, fiber-optic network that provides free, high-speed broadband to every household and public space. This would be a revolutionary decommodification of a vital resource, as transformative as public water or electricity. It seizes the means of information production for the collective good, ensuring that the digital public sphere is not a segregated, pay-to-play space but a universal foundation for a decolonized and democratic city.
