THROUGHOUT human history, kingdoms, empires and nations have sought power and dominance. Power has never been limited to military might alone; it has also depended on access to resources. In the ancient era, societies focused primarily on precious metals and agricultural resources. From the medieval period to the Industrial Revolution and the 21st century, global powers’ attention has shifted from industrial resources and fossil fuels to data that has become central to global power and economic stability.

As technological revolutions transformed human needs, the late 1990s and early 2000s introduced a new resource: digital data. In this new form of colonialism, powerful actors no longer relied solely on territorial occupation or physical extraction. Instead, they began extracting human experiences and transforming them into data through everyday digital interactions. Scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias describe this phenomenon as “data colonialism.”

The rise of the internet transformed the world into what is........

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