Escape Velocity. Computing and the Great Acceleration

Ever since 1990, computing has been opening up entirely new types of resources for extraction. In the digital context, the notion of extractivism points to the fact that “data is taken without meaningful consent and fair compensation for the producers and sources of that data”. Felix Stalder, professor of Digital Culture at the Zurich University of the Arts, points out that computing has boosted the great acceleration of human activities that has moved the Earth system into the Anthropocene. If we are to prevent the deeply authoritarian responses to the impending climate breakdown, we should unveil the colonialist character and the consequences of the current system of extractivism. This is what makes Vladan Joler’s work so urgent. New extractivism, presented at Aksioma (Ljubljana), gives an insight into the world-scale infrastructure designed to collect, analyse and connect all aspects of reality and turn them into capital, which, in turn, gives rise to new accumulations of wealth and concentrations of power.