Abstract: This paper develops two analogies in order to conceptualise endogeneity as a category of analysis. The first analogy compares Indigenous understandings of place and place-making and territorio as defined in Italian territorialist traditions. They are both locales endowed with a specific personality and agency: one is the home of Indigenous peoples facing settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, the other is the home of endogenous collectives facing increasing modalities of exogenous control. The second analogy links the current appropriation of metadata under ‘surveillance capitalism’ with past appropriations and their justification: terra nullius. This paper’s first and third section deal each with one of these analogies, while its second section bridges between the two by focusing on an early expression of territorialist aspirations and on an early experience of electronic networks development: Adriano Olivetti’s activity as political theorist and early developer of electronic machines. Both analogies sustain the analysis of a global settler-colonial present.
