By Harold C. Ford
“The choice between corporate-controlled technology governance that serves profit over people and community-controlled governance that serves human needs and environmental protection remains ours to make.”
– Mario D. Booker, 404: Justice Not Found
Mario D. Booker is a lifelong Flint-area resident who discovered the racialized impact of modern technology when, writing his doctoral dissertation, he investigated where companies located their data centers and surveillance equipment.
“I kept noticing it matched the old redlining maps exactly,” he told East Village Magazine. “Black and brown neighborhoods got the surveillance burden without the benefit.”
He explained that “the infrastructure angle, the environmental costs, the extraction from communities – that wasn’t getting studied” and “nobody was connecting the dots between where technology gets built and who pays the environmental price.”
Booker’s dissertation led to publication of his book, “404: Justice Not Found: How Algorithms Encode Apartheid.” He chose the title, he said, as “404 is the error code that means ‘page not found’ … a metaphor for how marginalized communities disappear from digital systems entirely.”
Problems and solutions
“404” can roughly be divided into two parts: an exploration of problems wrought by the digital age followed by an exploration of solutions.
In the first nine chapters, Booker demonstrates that modern technology is plagued by the timeworn, debilitating systems of racism and classism that have existed for centuries – millennia actually. He writes: “Algorithmic bias is not merely a technical glitch but a contemporary manifestation of systemic oppression and digital colonialism … artificial intelligence burdens marginalized communities worldwide with environmental and social costs.”
Algorithms are a set of mathematical instructions given to a computer to help calculate answers to problems. It is important to know that, if the instructions are biased, the answers will be biased as well. And “404” alleges rampant racial bias in modern digital algorithms.
In the second part of the book, chapters 10 to 15, Booker offers remedies – “technical solutions and accountability mechanisms” – that derive for the most part from Europe and nations south of the equator.
He concludes his 342-page tome with a clarion call to constituent communities to address digital racism, especially those that hold power. Booker declares, “The time for action is now.”
“A global crisis”
The first 150 pages of “404” reveal algorithmic Jim Crow or artificial intelligence (AI) as a global system of digital colonialism that benefits wealthy regions and not those that are marginalized.
This modern form of racial oppression does not feature “Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze” as mournfully sung by Billie Holiday in 1937, or images of an Alabama governor standing in the schoolhouse door to bar the entry of Black students. Instead, present-day digital discrimination is far less visible.
“Whites only” signs have been replaced by largely invisible, computerized formulas. As Booker explains, “the technical complexity of modern algorithmic systems can obscure bias and [thus] make it difficult to remedy.”
These more obscure digital forms of racist oppression are, nonetheless, disabling to significant swaths of the population. Booker fills the pages of his book with numerous examples of what author Michelle Alexander might call “The New Jim Crow” though in digital terms.
Digital discrimination touches nearly every aspect of modern human life, Booker notes – from credit scoring, health care, and internet service to employment decisions, surveillance by law enforcement, placement of technology centers that consume prodigious amounts of water and spew toxic waste, and more.
This modern iteration of bias is ever-present and ubiquitous. However, unless one looks carefully, or does the research as Booker has done, the racist nature of modern technology can easily escape attention.
“Objectivity is illusory,” Booker succinctly observes.
“Toward digital decolonization”
The final chapters of “404” offer hope, though, and some pathways forward in both theory and practice.
They include community-based research; multifaceted legal strategies that incorporate traditional environmental law with civil rights approaches and technology governance frameworks; technology infrastructure sensitive to healthy environments; and democratic oversight of technology decision-making.
Booker also cites approaches in other parts of the globe as promising models toward digital democracy: the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act; South Korea’s Digital New Deal; the African Union’s Continental Data Policy Framework; New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi and Indigenous Technology Rights; Kenya’s community-controlled renewable energy projects; and Catalonia’s cooperative broadband networks; and several others.
He asserts that those victimized by digital discrimination have access to reparative justice including resource redistribution and climate reparations. But the first step to solving a problem is recognizing it, which is what Booker’s “404” does for its readers.
Ultimately, Booker advocates for “technological development [to] serve human flourishing and ecological sustainability rather than corporate profit and social control.” And although he rarely invokes capitalism, and completely avoids the word socialism, it is clear that much of his discussion boils down to the advantages and disadvantages of those two economic systems. .
This reviewer asked Booker if meaningful digital reform is possible in a capitalist society, to which he responded, “Yes, it constrains things significantly, but that doesn’t mean nothing changes.”
The author said reform can happen in three ways: (1) make discrimination too expensive through lawsuits and reputation damage; (2) regulate the worst systems; or (3) build alternatives – cooperatives, public infrastructure, community ownership models.
“The third option is where real transformation happens because it changes the incentives themselves, not just the rules,” Booker said.
Clarion call
Booker avoids whimpering at the conclusion of “404,” instead opting to end with a figurative bang.
He calls for “technological liberation” through movements for economic democracy, environmental justice, and international solidarity that challenge corporate power while building community capacity.
“We don’t have time for more studies,” he advises. “The window for choosing technological liberation over digital colonialism continues to narrow as corporate concentration increases and environmental destruction accelerates.”
Booker thrusts his editorial finger into the chests of “those who hold power” – technology company executives, policymakers and government officials, academic colleagues, community members and organizations – to do something. In his final paragraphs, he challenges himself and every reader to oppose algorithmic oppression while working for technological justice.
Overall, readers of “404” should keep in mind that it originated as a Ph.D. dissertation, so it does read as a scholarly discussion of a modern dilemma. While that may seem a slog at times, if it lifts the veil of relative obscurity about the discriminatory impact of our digital environment – as it did for this reviewer – it’s well worth the time spent.
Editor’s Note: Mario D. Booker is a former student of Harold C. Ford at Beecher High School. This review originally appeared in East Village Magazine’s November 2025 issue.
