Uneven development: On data colonialism, history and the archive

This commentary evaluates Azadeh Akbari's ‘Uneven Datafication’ by affirming its connection between datafication and colonial history while cautioning against historical flattening. It argues that data colonialism should be understood through specific colonial formations and archival practices, rather than through broad analogies between past empires and contemporary platforms. The piece emphasizes that colonial logics continue to shape contemporary data infrastructures, though not always in direct or linear ways. It proposes a historically grounded framework for tracing how colonial durabilities are reproduced, transformed and interrupted within digital capitalism. To make colonialism more than an metaphor means recognizing the complexities and histories of colonialisms as they bear on the present to trace the how of how data capitalism makes uneven worlds.