Capitalismo informacional y dependencia digital: infraestructuras, datos y reorganización del poder global.

Abstract

This article examines how the expansion of digital platforms, informational infrastructures, and the data economy reconfigures technological dependence in contemporary capitalism. Through a critical integrative literature review and documentary analysis, it brings together contributions from the political economy of platforms, infrastructure studies, and Latin American dependency theory. The analysis identifies four interconnected mechanisms: the proprietary intermediation of markets and social activities; the concentration of storage and processing capacity; the monopolization of knowledge, standards, and intangible assets; and the 
transnational appropriation of value generated from data, labour, and resources located in peripheral economies. The article argues that the concepts of digital colonialism and data colonialism help describe specific dimensions of appropriation and subordination but do not replace dependence as a structural analytical category. The literature and cases examined in Latin America, Africa, and other regions of the Global South show that the adoption of digital technologies may expand access to services and markets while reproducing dependence on externally controlled infrastructures, platforms, and knowledge. It concludes that digital
sovereignty requires not only regulation and data localization but also public and collective capacities to decide which technologies should be developed, under what conditions, and according to which forms of distribution of their benefits and costs.