Cultures, Intersections, Networks. The Role of Algorithms in Defining Power Relations Based on Gender, Race, Class, Disability

Technological artifacts represent the historical-cultural products able to mediate our relationship with a world in continuous and rapid transformation. They, therefore, act as intermediaries with the environment around us and especially with the Other with which we are in “connection”. Therefore, while technology is affected by the cultural influences of those who produce it, it also directly affects the process of individuation of subjects, social organization and politics, re-proposing and amplifying power relations. In a digitalized capitalist universe, where the dominant paradigms of reference are still white, cisgender, and able-bodied men, the proposal is to adopt an intersectional approach – one that simultaneously takes into account variables of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability – to reread the bias of cultural choices and responses provided by algorithms.