CONCEPT
Technological Sovereignty
Communities' capacity to determine their own technological futures—building, governing, and adapting infrastructure according to self-determined priorities rather than external imposition.
Technological sovereignty names the right and capacity of communities to control the technology that shapes their lives. Developed in Latin American social movements and indigenous rights activism, the concept extends political sovereignty into the technological domain: communities should determine which technologies to adopt, how to configure them, what data to share, and what governance structures to establish. Ramesh Srinivasan's fieldwork demonstrates that technological sovereignty requires not merely access to tools but the institutional, economic, and knowledge conditions enabling communities to build and govern their own infrastructure. The Oaxacan cellular networks, Detroit platform cooperatives, and indigenous data governance frameworks exemplify sovereignty in practice—communities providing for themselves rather than waiting for inclusion in systems designed elsewhere.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept emerged from the recognition that political independence without technological self-determination is incomplete. Post-colonial nations that achieved formal sovereignty in the twentieth century remained dependent on technologies—telecommunications, computing, digital platforms—designed and controlled by former colonial powers and their corporate successors. This dependency reproduced colonial patterns: communities shaped by technologies they did