The process of transformation out of agriculture has altered the relations between humans and nature in a number of ways. There has been a change in land use that has affected forests as well as cultivated land. There have also been increasing demands on other natural resources. If we take technology to be the intended changes in the relationship between humans and nature, this process generates a wide range of inequalities. There are the inequalities that emerge from the redistribution of resources brought about by technology. These inequalities may be most visible in the case of natural resources, as when technological development destroys forests. But technology can also redistribute human resources, as when labour displacing technologies reduce employment. The access to technological products are often marked by differences that are ethically unacceptable. Technology also goes beyond physical space, affecting the way people think about themselves and about others. The access to technology is often presented in a way that celebrates inequality, as in the display of an ultra-modern car.
This project seeks to explore the multiple dimensions of inequality in technological change through the lens of a single set of products, those created by digital technologies. Digital technologies are a new site for modern incarnations of inequality, given how they are a realm of experience and activity not separate from the social. Uncovering socio-technological inequalities is integral to charting out the realities of socio-economic transformation in terms of novel vulnerabilities, precarities, and uncertainties that these inequalities spawn.