Tag Archives: Enslavement

May 11, 2026 · 3:11 pm

Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: Ghana Book Event – 2nd June

I’m delighted to announce that we will be hosting a relaxed and informal event at 6 pm on 2nd June in the Beach Bar at the Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra, to discuss some of the arguments contained within my new book Digital Inclusion in an Unequl World: An Emancipatory Manifesto, published by Routledge on April 6th. The event is the day before this year’s three-day eLearning Africa conference, and delegates participating in the conference are welcome to join us. The book contains 31 vignettes, and at least two of the authors who contributed to the book (David Hollow from Jigsaw Education and Tom Wambeke from ITCILO) are speaking at the conference, and will also contribute to the discussions about the book.

Graphic illustrations

Many, but by no means all, of the arguments of the book can be captured in these two graphics. We need to shift the balance from

  • economic growth to equity,
  • rights to responsibilities,
  • working for (or worse still on) to working with,
  • rhetoric to reality,
  • enslavement to freedom
  • me to we

We also need to rethink the meaning of inclusion and champion freedom and emancipation over its use to describe capture and enslavement.

Getting your own copy of the book

You can order the book direct from Routledge Store and Amazon, and a small number of copies will also be for sale at a 30% discount ((£25, €25, CHF25, $30) during the event in Accra.

We look forward to seeing you in Accra for the book event and at eLearning Africa.

Please use this contact form to let us know that you will be joining us

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, digital technologies, emancipation, inclusion, slavery

Tagged as , , , ,

May 25, 2022 · 3:02 pm

Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons: a thought experiment

It was a delight and a challenge to have the opportunity earlier today to present a keynote for this year’s IFIP 9.4 conference on Freedom and Social Inclusion in a Connected World in the form of a thought experiment on the topic of “Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons“.

My main aim was to explore how thinking about the “unfree” can help us better understand the intersection between freedom and digital tech. In particular I focused on five main themes: some of the ways in which academics have previously considered the concept of freedom within the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D); ways of understanding “unfreedom”; six examples of digital enslavement; the relationships between freedom, rights and responsibilities; and the ways in which people in general and academics in particular can resist enslavement by the digital barons.

The examples of digital enslavement that I briefly explored were:

  • Digital addiction
  • We are the data
  • Governments enforcing use of digital systems for government services
  • Labour exploitation (through extending the working week)
  • Digital poverty and education
  • Digital tech contributing to modern slavery

Time precluded the inclusion of several other forms of enslavement that I might have considered. Drawing on my medievalist backgroung, I was especially interested in the role and interests of the Digital Barons.

In part, this keynote drew on arguments that I have previously addressed in more detail in

I also made it clear that appropriately designed digital tech can be used to great advantage by poor and marginalised communities, although given the theme of the confernce I concentrated exclusively on “digital enslavement” and the role of the “digital barons”.

The full slide deck (in .pdf format) is available here without the transitions and animations. It also omits the subtitles in Spanish that were included for our colleagues in Peru who had originally been planning to host us in person.

7 Comments

Filed under Conferences, ICT4D, ICT4D conferences, Inequality

Tagged as , , ,