Talk by / Sandeep Mertia (Ed.)

Discussant / Jasmine Folz & Pradip Ninan Thomas

Data infrastructures are now more global than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically disparate and diverse contexts.

Sandeep is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Urban Doctoral Fellow at New York University. He is an ICT engineer by training, and former Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

Jasmine is a social anthropologist who is broadly interested in technology work(ers). For her doctoral research she conducted ethnographic research with members of the Indian FOSS community and explored how the development and meaning of this technology have been shaped by wider political-economic forces as well as by changes and continuities within social hierarchies of class, caste, and gender. This research explored the relationships between computer technologies and autonomy (both personal and national) and how political-economic positioning shapes how these relationships play out.

Pradip is an internationally recognised scholar and academic, studying the history and politics of Digital India.