The talk will focus on a new project on the decolonization of digital cultures and information. This involves an examination of digital technologies, information and everyday life in Mexico. Based on an ethnographic pilot study focused on the lived experiences of different people using WhatsApp in Mexico, I discuss the app in terms of its role as a critical infrastructure for an attention economy and affective information. I suggest WhatsApp is a paradigmatic example of what I have theorized as a “technology of life”, emphasizing two points: first, the everydayness and pervasive presence of the app in diverse life experiences and how it relates to wider cultural and popular forms, and second highlighting the ways in which life is expanded, experienced, and has become increasingly dependent on certain technologies. I suggest that the study of complex sociotechnical assemblages, enacted in different geographical and cultural settings than those documented in mainstream academia, present the case for the need of decolonizing the study of digital culture towards more diverse and inclusive futures.

BIO: Edgar Gómez Cruz is a Senior Lecturer in Media (Digital Cultures) at the School of the Arts and Media at the UNSW in Sydney, Australia. He has published widely on a number of topics relating to digital culture in top journals, particularly in the areas of material visual practices, digital ethnography and critical approaches to digital technologies. His recent publications include the book From Kodak Culture to Networked Image: An Ethnography of Digital Photography Practices (2012), and the co-edited volumes Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (Routledge, 2016) with Asko Lehmuskallio and Refiguring Techniques in Visual Digital Research (Palgrave, 2017), with Shanti Sumartojo and Sarah Pink.