Author: Seeta Peña Gangadharan (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Changes in our technological infrastructures are deepening inequalities and intensifying systemic racism. As society becomes more reliant on computation-hungry technologies such as cloud or software as services, computational service providers are hollowing out public institutions and diminishing their ability to administer basic democratic duties and to serve populations. For members of marginalized communities, this transformation adds to the challenge of getting the state to adequately address economic disparity, cultural violence, and political power imbalances, further obstructing paths to racial justice and equity. This paper argues that the rise of computational power warrants new ways of demanding racial equity and justice above and beyond familiar interventions focused on equitable access, diversity, and inclusion. To build out this argument, the paper looks at historic ways that race intersects issues of technology governance and identifies blind spots that overlook the outsize influence and wealth of technology companies. The paper then explores Big Computing, differentiating between computational power and the kinds of power associated with networked or platform technologies. Computational power often works around democracy, and its problems encompass more than the typical ones of access, bias, privacy, or free expression. Advocates for racial justice and equity face a unique opportunity to lead debate on computational infrastructure and its broad implications for equity and justice.