Discussion at the launch of the book The Costs of Connection: Data Colonialism – Technology, Art, and Resistance in the Age of Platforms

Surveillance, platform, or communication capitalism, techno-feudalism, data colonialism.
After Donald Trump’s first term, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance programs, a wave of fundamental critiques emerged, analyzing the technological operations of online platforms and proposing new names for what seemed to be a new phase of capitalism—one driven by the extraction of user data and the commodification of various aspects of life beyond the sphere of paid productive labor.

Several years later, one of these foundational critiques – The Costs of Connection by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias (Maska, Ljubljana) – is now available in Slovenian translation.

On Wednesday, October 8, 2025, we invite you to join us in the Alma Karlin Hall at Cankarjev dom for a discussion critically examining the book’s central concept – data colonialism – and its implications in both global and local contexts. How does Couldry and Mejias’s framework differ from other definitions of the supposedly “new” phase of capitalism it investigates? And is it even meaningful to speak of a new phase at all? Where should we emphasize the theoretical distinctions between the mechanisms of advertising corporations and those of state surveillance, and where do their intersections become most evident?

Neja Berger will moderate a discussion with guests from the fields of theory (Nina Cvar), technology (Lio Novelli), art (Klara Debeljak), and activism (Lori Šramel Čebular). Together, they will connect the technological dimensions of data extraction with theoretical analyses of power relations, artistic practices, and activist strategies of resistance, exploring possible alternatives and exits from the current paradigm.