Posts By: Gianmarco Cristofari

Digital Tribulations 6: A Radical Hacker-Fanonian Critique of Digital Colonialism

By Gianmarco Cristofari, January 14, 2026

The introduction to this series of interviews can be read here.  Interview with Deivison Faustino At the presentation of the MTST’ book in São Paulo, I met Deivison Faustino, a figure who immediately struck me as both likable and interesting. He has a rapper-like style, with his cap worn backwards, and he is a professor [...]

Digital Tribulations 5: Communication, Labor, and Dependency: A Marxist Critique of Digital Sovereignty in Brazil and Latin America

By Gianmarco Cristofari, January 6, 2026

On a cool, sunny morning I take an Uber to the USP campus to interview Professor Roseli Figaro, from the School of Arts and Communications at the University of São Paulo. Riding through the city, the difference between the more central neighborhoods and the wealthy southern ones is immediately visible: more greenery, bigger houses, less [...]

Digital Tribulations 4: Interview with Pedro Burity on Popular Digital Sovereignty and Social Movements in Latin America

By Gianmarco Cristofari, December 20, 2025

The following interview needs a longer introduction to properly contextualize the Brazilian social movements background. I first met Pedro Burity, a graduate student and researcher at the University of Brasilia, at the Association of internet Research conference, this October in Rio de Janeiro. Pedro researches sociot-echnical arrangements and imaginaries for social movements in Brazil. He [...]

Digital Tribulations 3: Interview with James Gorgen on the Brazilian Governmental Plan of Digital Sovereignty

By Gianmarco Cristofari, December 11, 2025

(introduction to this series of interviews can be read here) I met James Gorgen, a public functionary at the Brazilian Ministry of Development and Industry, over an online call I did from Rio de Janeiro while he was connecting from Argentina where he currently lives. James has long been a thoughtful commentator on digital developments [...]

Digital Tribulations 2: Interview with Oscar D’Alva on Platformed Regimes of Quantification in Official Statistics

By Gianmarco Cristofari, December 4, 2025

(first, introduction posting of this series can be read here) I met Oscar D’Alva, a researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), at  a bar in Botafogo during the pre-conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) that took place in Rio de Janeiro in mid-October 2025. Oscar’s PhD thesis, entitled “Estatísticas [...]

Digital Tribulations 1: A Pilgrimage in South America

By Gianmarco Cristofari, November 19, 2025

There is something obvious about our obsession with computation. With the invention of the wheel, human beings imagine a circular world that turns and turns again, an endless cycle of seasons, lives, kingdoms. Indian cosmology imagines this as samsara: the continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth through which living beings pass. With the invention [...]

The State of the Tech Workers Global Movement – Interview with Simone Robutti

By Gianmarco Cristofari, November 16, 2023

Tech Won’t Save Us – Organize! Simone Robutti has been working as a programmer for the last ten years. One day he started to become interested both in the theory of techno politics and the practice of tech worker organization. In fact, his trajectory is kind of similar to mine – a repentant lawyer who [...]

On platformization permeation: intersectionalists perspectives from India

By Gianmarco Cristofari, February 3, 2022

On Monday 17th, I got myself ready for some pleasant Zoom fatigue. At 9.30 am CET (2.30 pm in India) I joined three hours and half roundtable on feminist and intersecionalist perspectives on platformization. During five high-quality presentations, I learned about the increasing permeation of platformization in India’s informal economy, care work, and more. I [...]