Hydro-de-Colonialism and the Cables Around the Cape
Jess Auerbach · 2024
This chapter explores the undersea Internet infrastructure that cups the Southern tip of Africa. I refract Isabel Hofmeyr’s hydrocolonialism and Nikhil Anand’s explorations of hydroinformatics to consider how subsea fibre optic cables are one part of digital infrastructure, which is widely experienced as magic. In tracing one segment of one oceanic cable line, I describe some of the processes necessary for the construction of hydroinformatic infrastructure – that is, digital infrastructure as it pertains to water. This provokes readers to ask whether the status quo is inevitable or might be reformulated going forward and whether trans-continental digital flows might be conceptualised in relation to hydro-de-colonialism.