Intersticia
The researcher was invited to attend the Intersticia ‘Brave Conversations’ event at the Australian National University on the 10th and 11th April 2017.
Given the way the researcher was treated appallingly by the ANU who believe they are a law unto themselves and who harbour some nasty self-serving vipers who claim cultural connection with Country (utter hypocrisy) I chose to contribute to this important summative event with a written response as follows.
I don’t care that I’ll never be invited back to their supposedly prestige Fellows bar and fully expect to be arrested for trespass on their stolen property.
Intersticia
Web Science Down Under
“Brave Conversations”
Australian National University
10th and 11th April 2017
1. Introduce yourself to the group
Greetings. Please is a better way to start your prompt. My name is Alexander Malkay Hayes. I am in a very tenuous position at present between completing a PhD, working with an Aboriginal community on a cultural database and renovating a house with five children to attend to.
2. What you would like to get out of attending our “conversations”?
I doubt I will get very much out of them as there is little impetus here to connect with those who cant attend in person. Given the day and age we are in you could have well have setup ‘virtual presenters’ as any other professional symposium would endeavour to do. I'm at that last critical point where everything is just a bloody distraction from the writeup of the thesis and I'm sure those of you have either been there or are in the middle of it then know exactly what I am talking about.
2. What are you focusing on in your research?
I am focussed on the social and ethical implications of wearable technology as we descend into a dystopia of implantable, insertable technology and this disaster called the Singularity that corporations would have us believe is the answer for the anthropocene. I am working closely with Aboriginal and other first nation communities who believe that it’s about the law of the land, not the law of man and that this tech led discussion is simply another genocide. In short my focus is on what is taking our "instinct" away, where has our "liyan" gone and if we have lost our moral compass and even the ability to grasp at an ethical framework as individuals then what hope do our communities have ?
3. How would you like to connect your research areas to “business / real world” problems that we can unpack and focus on on Day One and then link to the broader conference conversation on Day Two?
Drive north from Sydney and into any mineral rich area of Australia and witness the rampant destruction of pristine ecologies which Aboriginal communities have protected and used purposefully without destruction for tens of thousands of years. Bear witness to the genocide, apartheid and rampant exploitation of the communities whose lands have been colonised, carved up and exploited with technologies playing a bigger and bigger role in their marginalisation from society. As far as big data is concerned have a look at the Australian Welfare Card and the disaster it is proving for Aboriginal communities, kinship, traditional law and couple this all with the current rhetoric for the Australian government who barbarically and constantly change Native Title policy to suit itself while facilitating and outright directly supporting mining magnates who are as fat as toads and as ugly as toads. Where "business" and "real world" sits amongst this is likely to be framed in conversations that are 99% western world development - "...oh look...a resource...get rid of the occupants and lets mine it to create every known capitalist looking good that we can fill our empty lives up with". It's obvious, I'm not there over three days to pay platitudes to socio-technical fanfare. Unpack, focus? I'm there in a waste management role and hopefully someone else will be awake in the audience.
