Words by Tyson Yunkaporta

Photos by Steven Rhall

This story was originally published in Issue 4 and is brought to you by our partner, Deakin University.

Are we becoming too smart for our own good? Tyson Yunkaporta examines the implications of the Internet of Things on Indigenous sovereignty.

What if somebody made a new spirit world: a purgatory for the narcissistic shadows, the egos and attachments formed over a lifetime; the labels and names, thoughts and images of your life? A place where these mortal things accumulate over decades and then seek to live forever in a realm of dark clouds? What if the patterns of your identity, like cultural DNA, were replicated in arcane codes and trapped in this world?

You would have to wonder at what stage this parasitic shadow world would become its own self-organising system: crossing borders into worlds of spirit, then shaping the physical world to continue extracting the resources needed to sustain itself. Perhaps with each new upgrade, you know less about your device and your device knows more about you.

You wake from this nightmare into the birth of a new year, finding with relief that in 2020 the real world is still here, and cyberspace is… Where is it exactly? Not in the servers, or even in the carcinogenic signals zapping invisibly in the air about your head. Ah well, never mind; it was just a dream, fading like smoke as all dreams must. You are still here, in this physical world.

And yet, in this new year, a new layer has been added to the teetering stack encrusted over your habitat – the Internet of Things. Fifty billion devices are being rolled out in 2020, making cities smart and lands manageable, recording and sensing every aspect of physical reality and uploading it to the cloud in real time. These are tangible, physical objects, such as smart lighting, smart appliances, sensors and surveillance equipment. Each of these objects is made with rare earth metals inside: metals extracted from lands and communities that have been oppressed for that extraction. Lands and communities which must now play host to radioactive waste for millennia to come – the by-product of refining those metals. China is cutting back on production because a lot of their plants have stopped flowering and this is a concern. But new mines and facilities are opening up on Aboriginal land in Australia, so global supply is secure for now.

The 50 billion devices of the Internet of Things (IoT) is projected to increase by 4,000 percent every year from now on. These devices of course become obsolete very rapidly, so they will need to be replaced and upgraded every two years or so. Nobody has yet figured out how to store these horrendously toxic mountains of e-waste, beyond sending it to countries like Brazil and letting them deal with it.

The IoT is described as a digital ‘ecosystem’, although it bears very little resemblance to ecosystems as Indigenous people, and even biologists, understand them. Ecosystems are complex systems and as such are resilient, self-organising and self-sustaining. IoT systems are not complex; they’re complicated. Units cannot fix or replace themselves. Errors cannot be self-correcting and can spread catastrophically. Changes in context cannot be responded to by the system – it requires constant intervention and tinkering. It is fragile and in constant risk of crisis and collapse.

Physics being too uncomfortable to consider, “user acceptance” is the main problem being considered in evaluations of this situation. It’s seen a barrier to achieving the “cost-cutting benefits” that will accrue to better “support governments and industry”, rather than consideration being given to the human populations who are noticeably not described as end users. This is because we are not the users, but the used. Our data and resources are extracted for government and corporate benefit in the control of citizen, worker and consumer behaviour.

Of course no meaningful provisions are made for communities who may choose to opt out or who will be denied access by distance. For these people, any way of living or working outside of the system will become increasingly impossible, eventually resulting in mass migrations to ghettoes – both urban and digital.

IoT systems are not complex; they’re complicated.

... when the world is burnt to a crisp it will be okay, because we can just reboot it.

But an Indigenous voice on this topic is an outrageously marginal and silly thing – ghost stories, really? This voice is supposed to be limited to questions of cultural needs, challenges and opportunities for our community. Questions like: What culturally appropriate support is needed for Indigenous uptake and acceptance of IoT?

However, there are urgent crises resulting from this rapid and compulsory development that threaten not only our existence, but the existence of all living things. An Indigenous perspective on these matters cannot just be about how to precipitate these crises with cultural sensitivity. Even if the metaphors I use to describe this reality seem like primitive superstition, we are still looking at the same reality, the same outcomes.

You might take solace in the more widely accepted dreamings of the IT cowboys creating this world from the west coast of the United States. A disturbing number of them believe completely in Simulation Theory – the idea that we are all living in a computer simulation anyway, and that when the world is burnt to a crisp it will be okay, because we can just reboot it. If that is the case, I guess it’s just happy New Year, and business as usual.

This is an excerpt from Issue 4 of Matters Journal. Keen to read the full article? You can pick up a copy of Issue 4 at our online store!

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne