Information and communications technology (ICT) challenges fundamental presuppositions of law and democracy, creating a new horizon for reimagining liberal democracy. For example, Helene Landemare (2021) argues that contemporary democratic theory rests on eighteenth-century understandings of society, technology, and communication, which are no longer persuasive because of the transformative revolutions of information science and communications technologies. She argues that the new technologies call us to reimagine the institutions of democracy. Law too must be and is being, reimagined. Two features of the emerging view of law are (1) a minimal ontological realism; and (2) a complex systems model advanced by Bruno Latour and Manuel DeLanda (who are indebted to Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Whitehead). This new jurisprudence also suggests, as argued by Ruha Benjamin and others, that the emerging social order continues patterns associated with colonialism and discriminatory practices that normalize discrimination and inequalities.

1. DATA COLONIALISM AND
DEMOCRACY

2. HOW IS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF
DEMOCRACY CHANGING?
Why is information technology suddenly on the Agenda?
And what does it mean for democracy?

3. THREE REVOLUTIONS
LUCIANO FLORIDI, THE FOURTH REVOLUTION

4. THE FOURTH REVOLUTION
The Age of Information

5. THE PERSON AS INFORG

6. THE INFORMATION
JAMES GLEICK

7. SHANNON
INFORMATION

8. ONE IF BY
LAND, TWO
IF BY SEA

9. INFORMATION
AND ENTROPY
No Lamp 0 1 state
1 lamp 2 2 states
2 lamps 3 3 states or 4
states if
placement
matters

10. BITS!

11. SHANNON ENTROPY

12. COMPRESSIBILITY
A TOTALLY RANDOM
STRING HAS NO
INFORMATION

13. ALAN TURING
• Non-human Computation

14. COMPUTATION IS A
NATURAL PHENOMENON

15. PEOPLE ARE NO LONGER THE
EXCUSIVE COMPUTERS

16. 2. THE NEW SOCIAL THEORIES
Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences

17. COMPLEXITY THEORY IN SOCIAL
SCIENCE

19. EXAMPLE OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM:
SPIDERS, GRASSHOPPERS, GRASS

20. EMERGENT
BEHAVIOR

21. NONLINEAR
SCALING

22. COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE EVERYWHERE

23. SOCIAL ONTOLOGY

24. SOCIETY AS ASSEMBLAGE
An assemblage is not a fixed or stable structure but a
constantly evolving and shifting arrangement.
It consists of diverse components such as objects,
bodies, ideas, practices, affects, and relations that
come together and interact in specific ways.
These elements are not predetermined or essential but
are contingent and can be reconfigured in different
ways.

25. MULTIPLE
LEVELS OF
SOCIAL
ONTOLOGY
Embracing non-linearity and
emergent properties
• Recognition of unpredictable
effects and novel behaviors arising
from interactions
• Challenges reductionist
approaches
Recognizing self-organization and
adaptive behavior
• Emphasis on decentralized
interactions and emergent
patterns
• Challenges centralized control and
hierarchical organization

26. MULTIPLE LEVELS OF
SOCIAL ONTOLOGY
Appreciating the role of feedback loops
and dynamics
• Understanding positive and
negative feedback mechanisms
• Analysis of system dynamics and
Resilience
Exploring non-equilibrium and far-from-
equilibrium states
• Recognition of perpetual change
and instability
• Acknowledgment of sudden
shifts and phase transitions

27. MULTIPLE LEVELS OF
SOCIAL ONTOLOGY
Considering the role of networks
and interdependencies
• Highlighting
interconnectedness and flow
of information
• Importance of studying
relationships and network
structures
Acknowledging the role of
context and situatedness
• Understanding the influence
of specific historical and
cultural contexts
• Study of localized interactions
and contextual factors

28. CAUSALITY

29. NEW THEORIES OF CAUSALITY
• Non-linear causality: Challenges linear models, emphasizes complex
interactions and feedback loops
• Context-dependent causality: Recognizes the influence of specific
historical, cultural, and environmental contexts
• Feedback-driven causality: Highlights the role of feedback mechanisms in
shaping causal relationships

30. NEW THEORIES OF CAUSALITY
• Multiple causalities: Acknowledges the
interdependencies and interactions of
various causal factors
• Emergent causality: Considers the
emergence of new causal relationships at
higher system levels
• Sensitivity to initial conditions: Recognizes
the impact of small variations on causal
dynamics.

31. A new epistemology is needed to account for the non-compressible information in objective
systems.
NEITHER ANALYTIC NOR
POSTMODERN

32. DEMOCRACY AFTER
COMPLEXITY

33. DEMOCRACY
AFTER
COMPLEXITY

34. MANUEL DELANDA ON
DEMOCRACY AFTER
COMPLEXITY
Democracy is an assemblage
(Deleuze) that is constantly
evolving and reconfiguring itself
based on the interactions and
relations between its constituent
parts.
• Highly pluralistic across cultures
and social ontologies.
• Interdisciplinary perspectives
are needed.
• Enactive (the systems evolve
over time).

35. DEMOCRACY AFTER COMPLEXITY
Empowerment and Inclusivity
• Delanda emphasizes empowering individuals and
promoting inclusivity in democracy.
• Decentralizing decision-making and allowing broader
participation.
• Enhances individual agency and amplifies marginalized
voices.
• Potential for fostering a robust and inclusive democratic
system.

36. DEMOCRACY AFTER COMPLEXITY
• Adaptability and Flexibility
• Focus on self-organization and non-linear dynamics.
• Democratic processes are emergent and subject to constant
change. (Assemblage)
• Encourages the system to respond and adapt to new
challenges.

37. DATA COLONIALISM AND DEMOCRACY
• What is Data Colonialism?
• Why is this a problem for democracy?
• Floridi concept of Inforg and identity

38. WHAT IS DATA COLONIALISM?
The extension of a global process of extraction that started
under colonialism and continued through industrial capitalism,
culminating in today’s new form: instead of natural resources
and labor, what is now being appropriated is human life
through its conversion into data.
Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection
(2019)

39. WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM FOR DEMOCRACY?
1. The commodification of private data results in the
construction of commercial identities intended for
exploitation. (Floridi, 2017)
2. It corrupts what Habermas called the “Ideal Speech
Situation” by infecting by reducing political choice to
commercial choice
3. The significance of individual choice becomes diminished as
political choice becomes commodified too. This was evident
in the Cambridge Analytic scandal of the 2016 US
Presidential election.

40. DATA COLONIALISM AND DISCOURSE
The normative goals derived from Democratic discourse
become limited to those that can be described and negotiated
through the logic of computational systems. The knowledge
structure of the internet determines human communicative
potential.
Non-compressible information, which is often the subject of
narrative, is displaced by misplaced attempts to develop
reductive rule-based systems to guide policy. The tension
between narrative and counter-narrative that characterizes
Critical Thought is subordinated to the commodification of
story.

41. POST SECULAR
DEMOCRACY
What Habermas gets right:
• Religious persons have a
legitimate place in democratic
discourse.
• Religion is an enduring feature of
human life.
• What Habermas gets wrong:
• Religion is not equivalent to
metaphysics. It is a
misunderstanding of
religiousness
• Religious speech often is non-
intentional and pre-conceptual. It
evokes meaning from fragments
of lived experience. “A finger
pointing to the moon.”