The hidden labour of the internet
And how design can bring it out into the open.
he kind of design that goes unnoticed—a short-term rental agreement, a cleverly put-together government announcement—is the kind that often creates the authority that rules our lives.
In the past, this power was wielded by colonial empires to obscure their violent extraction, thereby creating legitimacy and a veneer of ‘civility.’ Today, these same mechanisms are wielded by Big Tech to erase the people who really built the internet, in an attempt to justify the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few. Our job is to reveal these mechanisms.
Colonial regimes used cadastral surveys, pass books, and civilising‑mission rhetoric to turn land theft and extraction into orderly, documented governance; today, Big Tech disguises extractive data practices in metric dashboards and “innovation” language that looks similarly procedural and neutral.
The imbalance between the real creators of the internet and those who control it is built into the internet’s design. Making this power visible—the power of creators, content moderators, media organisations, journalists—opens space for us to govern the internet on our own terms.
The internet is not magical
Most people’s everyday experience of the internet is that of a mystic force attributed mainly to the work of a select few tech oligarchs.
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