Extending uneven datafication: Complicity, aspiration, and the privilege of pessimism

This commentary builds on Azadeh Akbari's position article Uneven Datafication, which challenges universalizing accounts of data colonialism and digital capitalism by foregrounding unevenness as constitutive rather than incidental. Akbari argues that colonial logics of classification, extraction, and asymmetry persist within contemporary data infrastructures—captured in her provocation that “the colony is an algorithm”—and are experienced differently across contexts. Her intervention offers an important corrective to Western-centric frameworks and advances a relational, historically grounded understanding of datafication. Extending this argument, the commentary proposes a complementary shift toward foregrounding agency, aspiration, and ambivalence within these uneven landscapes. While acknowledging structural asymmetries and the co-constitution of coloniality and capitalism, it moves beyond an analytic centered primarily on extraction to emphasize socio-technical entanglement and enablement. In doing so, it highlights how digital systems are not only imposed but actively inhabited, negotiated, and repurposed—revealing forms of value, choice, and possibility within constraint.