Decolonizing Tech Discourse: Summer Reads on Resistance, AI Ethics, and Semiconductor Geopolitics
Original framing: “What to read: A summer book list” — Rest of World
The history of tech resistance is deeply tied to anti-colonial struggles, from the 1960s Chipko movement in India to the 1980s anti-apartheid boycotts of South African tech. The semiconductor industry’s reliance on Taiwanese manufacturing is a direct legacy of Cold War techno-nationalism and U.S. containment policies. The 'AI companion' trope echoes 19th-century colonial narratives of 'civilizing' technologies imposed on the Global South.
The Rest of World book list reflects a Western-centric framing of tech resistance that individualizes structural problems, obscuring how semiconductor dependency and AI companionship are symptoms of a colonial-capitalist tech order.
Indigenous epistemologies, from Māori *kaitiakitanga* to African Ubuntu, offer alternative models that reject extractive logic, while historical precedents like the Chipko movement show that resistance is not new but systematically erased. The 'danger' of Taiwan chips is not a future threat but a present reality for communities in the Majority World, where tech extraction fuels displacement and surveillance. A systemic solution requires dismantling the infrastructures of tech imperialism—not just reading about them—by centering land-based governance, decolonizing AI, and building decentralized alternatives. The trickster here is the semiconductor itself, a fragile entity that exposes the absurdity of global tech dependence while offering a path to reimagining technology as a relational, not extractive, force.