IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 29

detect when a person is in breach of
a curfew or in a restricted area.
On the consumer level, wearable
technologies have taken this moni-
toring of our everyday activities to a
more dangerous level by providing us
with the convenience of knowing
our own heartbeats, our position
or "whereabouts" using geographic
information systems (GIS), and
our network connections. In many
cases this monitoring directly affects
essential services such as medical
insurance, credit rating, social rank-
ing, or access to related services. This
extends even further for Aboriginal
people via a well meaning, misin-
formed and largely invasive breach
of civil and human rights as they
are tracked and restricted from
using their pension funds in Aus-
tralia by means of an electronic card,
the "Basics Card."
It is evident from literature in
human computing, wearable tech-
nologies, engineering and ethics
domains that the trajectory of tech-
nological innovation and embedded
technologies as subdermal injec-
tions of Internet-connected things
is the next step for humanity. Some
researchers, engineers, and social
activists posit that it is time for
humans to be microchipped as a
matter of national security, of
community safety, and for person-
al well-being.

This threat is evidenced by the
fixations of a few on inventing a
certain cyborg future, and by those
who would celebrate the demise of
humanity in preference for a trans-
humanist existence. In all this there
is one clear and consistent message
resonating [12]:
"...to wake up non-Aboriginal
people to a relationship with
the land; to foster trust, friend-
ship and empathy between the
indigenous community and the
wider Australian and Interna-
tional communities."
-Goolarabooloo,
Paddy Roe [20]
We must recognize that these
hybrid, ubiquitous, and seemingly
convenient technologies are part
of a greater array of forces that
take us away from ourselves. We
lose ourselves if we surrender our
autonomy, our life spirit, our life led
by intuition. That intuition, our sum
total sensory experience of self
is known by the Nyikina people of
the Kimberley Region of Western
Australia as our liyan.
"...Liyan embodies the core
of Nyikina consciousness
which determines the status
of individual, emotional, psy-
chological and physical well
being. Liyan, the capacity to
stay true to one's self, is con-
nected to body, land and
spirit and provides a sense
of balance."
-Dr. Anne Poelina,
Nyikina Senior Custodian [21]

Greatest Threat
The onset of automated, networked
systems facilitated by the Internet,
along with the rapid shift towards
wearable technologies as an every-
day convenience, and the pervas-
ive manner in which every known
space that humans occupy is a target
for a data logger or surveillance cam-
era, is a situation that is potentially
as great a threat to Aboriginal people
of Australia - and to everyone glob-
ally - as anything else that has
emerged as a threat to our humanity.
DECEMBER 2017

In the 1992 BBC Series, "Millen-
nium," Frans Hoogland [22], in dis-
cussion with Nyikina Elder Paddy
Roe from the Kimberley region of
Western Australia, articulates what
"liyan" means for many Aboriginal
people of the Kimberley.
∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

"...This whole countr y is
mapped out. Now, each area
is like a human being, got
feeling, got the liyan, that is
the liyan of place. The liyan is
like the life force, it's like your
spirit, like your essence. Now
the only way to make contact
to those locations, to those
sites, is through our liyan."
-Frans Hoogland
As Hoogland elicidates, the very
reason for our everyday existence,
our life force is grounded and
achieved by listening to country,
place first, lest we lose ourselves
and our connection with each other.
We run the risk otherwise of being
subservient to this technology,
answering to superintelligence on
the streets, only to realize that in
its artificiality we are listening to
ghostly whisperings of recordings
from the time when we once knew
ourselves as humans. With reason
dismissed, reason in itself is sub-
sumed and becomes subsumed
under this technical or instrumental
regime [22].
In Australia, in listening to country
we recognize that peppering our
existence with these pervasive tech-
nologies is perhaps the worst pos-
sible route we have taken since the
mid-1980s as a nation. We must wake
up and recognize that surveillance in
all its forms is an act of cultural geno-
cide, an epitaph inscribed on our
tombstone of self-preservation.
We must wake up.

Author Information
Alexander Hayes is a Ph.D. candi-
date at the University of Wollon-
gong, School of Computing and
Information Technology, and a visit-
ing Researcher at Aalto University,
LeGroup, Media Lab, Finland. Email:
alex@alexanderhayes.com.
(continued on page 54)

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