What role does data play in 21st-century development?

Apr 27, 2025 | CULTMED, DEVELOPER

Though ubiquitous, the metaphor of data as the new oil of capitalism conceals the complex developmental logic underpinning contemporary digital economies. Digital transformation is increasingly framed as a developmental imperative, with states adopting industrial strategies aimed at economic revitalisation through digital infrastructures, data governance, and AI systems. Yet these efforts unfold within a global capitalist system marked by entrenched asymmetries in technological capacity, institutional power, and access to capital. What emerges is a digitally mediated form of dependency, where peripheral and semi-peripheral states are compelled to integrate into data-centric value chains largely controlled by monopolistic platforms headquartered in the core. The American tech giants dominate European markets through proprietary algorithms and immense R&D investments, all while externalising costs and evading taxation. The ambition to replicate such developmental models often proves illusory, constrained by scale, financialisation, and legal regimes that favour transnational capital. The European Union has responded by attempting to develop a regulatory framework centred on data sovereignty, digital rights, and ethical AI, seeking to assert its normative power in the global digital economy. Yet, its internal market fragmentation and dependency on foreign technologies continue to hinder these efforts. Replicating a similar economy of scale at any national level focused on leveraging data for developmental purposes is inconceivable. Data is far from mere raw material; it must be created, cleaned, standardised, and prepared before being used to develop algorithms, AI systems, public services or commodities—an aspect frequently overlooked in mainstream AI representations. The rapid expansion of platform labour and gig work represents a key mechanism through which data is extracted from everyday economic and social interactions, often under precarious working  conditions. These forms of labour not only generate valuable data for algorithmic optimisation but also expose workers to new regimes of surveillance, fragmentation, and deregulation. The role of law and the nation-state (s) is essential for determining data as objects suitable for public or private sector usage. Nonetheless, policy initiatives readily allocate financial resources to deploy data as a new means of stimulating growth, often merely extending the influence of tech giants into public service provisions. The development of the public sector is often confined to rectifying market failures or preparing datasets for the advancement of commercial services. Indeed, data is the lifeblood of capitalism, flowing through labour, organisational, public, private, national, and geopolitical processes. The promise of data-driven development, however, remains deeply ambivalent—marked less by transformative potential than by the reproduction of systemic dependencies. This workshop interrogates these contradictions, asking what it means to pursue development in a world where data both enables and limits the autonomy of nations and citizens.

WORKSHOP WITH GUEST LECTURERS

 

Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)

Vukotinovićeva 2

Zagreb, Croatia

6 May, 15:00 CET

Dr Juan Grigera

Senior Lecturer in International Development

King’s College University of London

Dr Jamie Woodcock

Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy

King’s College University of London

ART PERFORMANCE

Multimedia Institute

Preradovićeva 18

Zagreb, Croatia

6 May, 19:00 CET

!Mediengruppe Bitnik

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