While reading Arola’s essay and her preoccupation with digital design and cultural materiality, I recalled Liboiron’s Pollution is Colonialism and how she also uses the metaphor of “Land” to agitate for cultural sensitivity. The two scholars tend to metaphorize “Land” as a cultural symbol of both the material and immaterial, including humans whose identities are shaped by their environments. I also see how this is connected to Thompson’s proposed solution to the thirstiness of AI: the public’s leverage on access to natural resources informed by cultural awareness and land autonomy. (90) [TO-20]
[Arola, 2018; Liboiron, 2021; Thompson, 2023]