Whoever holds the kite string...

Digitalization has been examined from all angles and discussed in detail. The Symposium on Digital Inequality and Data Colonialism, hosted by Üsküdar University Faculty of Communication and held over three days, has concluded. The symposium, which took place from May 15-17 with the first two days in person and the third day online, featured world-renowned communication scholars. Professor Nick Couldry and Professor Ali Ulises Mejias, known for their work on data colonialism, delivered a joint presentation highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of digitalization and drawing attention to the new form of colonialism operating through data. Today, data is the most important commodity of the capitalist system. The unequal functioning and colonialism within the system also largely take place through data.

Professor Natalie Fenton, who emphasized the positioning of digitalization within the capitalist system, also discussed whether technological progress can truly be considered development within a capitalist system that feeds on inequalities. Professor Haluk Geray, who highlighted cloud colonialism, pointed out that the imperial order established in the world continues to operate today within digitalization.

The era we live in is focused on knowledge or information. With the introduction of digital technologies, information has begun to be produced much more serially and distributed rapidly. Previously, that is, before the digital technological age, the fundamental basis for the production of knowledge was thought. Scientists, intellectuals, and researchers produced knowledge by supporting their intellectual faculties with scientific research. With digitalization, however, the production of knowledge has begun to shift from humans to machines and has taken on a more industrial form. The shift of knowledge production from an intellectual foundation to an industrial one has also caused the philosophy of the work, or rather its fundamental understanding, to begin to change.

Knowledge based on human intellectual production makes contact with the human being and touches their life. Knowledge that is the product of intellectual production serves the progress of humanity. We know that thinkers and scientists have guided all the change and transformation processes in human history. Every intellectual touch has had a concrete reflection in human development. With the development of computer-based technologies and digitalization, knowledge production has moved to an industrial environment and has become commercialized.

The first major industrial revolution created the environment for the establishment of the capitalist system; therefore, commercialization and the rise of the commodity as a value were spread over time. However, the development of digital technologies and digitalization were born into advanced capitalism, and therefore, from the very beginning, they gained functionality through the system's competitive understanding based on inequality. The rules of capitalism, which lack equality, also determined the way information production and distribution technologies are used.

One might think that in a system we call an information society, which operates with digital technologies, all people should have easy access to information. Yet, the reality is different. The tools for producing and distributing information, born into the capitalist system, are under the management and control of capital. Therefore, what kind of information will be produced, which segments of society will receive the produced information and to what extent, how it will be used, etc., are all determined and operated within the existing power relations.

Therefore, being an information society and living in the digital age does not mean that everyone can access information and use it according to their own needs. Those who control the source of the water determine where and how much water will flow. Similarly, those who possess information technologies determine what information will be given to whom and to what extent.

The paradox of the strong and the weak is the most fundamental basis of the capitalist system. As long as those who lack power remain, the existence of the strong continues. For this reason, the strong need the weak. Therefore, power feeds, grows, and sustains powerlessness. Every period of human history has its own unique character. The powerful of each period are the actors of that period. Actors develop and operate devices suitable for the character of the period. Although human history is in a constant state of evolution, the strong and the weak mostly maintain their positions. That is, the actors are always the same; what changes are the devices. Before industrialization, the instrument of power and sovereignty was land. With industrialization, the instrument of power and sovereignty shifted from land to machines and took on a symbolic value through money. With digitalization, the instrument of power has become information-oriented. The actors are the same; only the devices, and consequently the style, have changed. Therefore, humanity's transition to digital technologies and the increase in the quantity and distribution speed of information seem to have led to the strengthening of the status quo rather than creating a more egalitarian world. Colonialism, which operated on land and sea, has now begun to operate in outer space as well.

We are in the digital age. Data is flying through the air, but whoever holds the kite string also determines the direction of the flight.