IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022 - 6

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Editorial
The Digital Transformation and
Modern Indentured Servitude
Jeremy Pitt
Imperial College London, London SW7 2BT, U.K.
 It has become increasingly conventional to open
a workshop or conference with an acknowledgment
of the country, as an appropriate gesture of recognition
for the traditional owners of the land hosting the
event. During and post-pandemic, with the prevalence
of virtual events, it is quite likely that someone,
somewhere, will be connecting from land no longer
" belonging " (in a purely base, legalistic sense) to the
traditional keepers.
Therefore, the acknowledgment of the country
serves a significant purpose in raising awareness and
drawing attention to a deep injustice that persists to
this day, with the hope that it will one day be redressed
[1]. An honest appraisal of history, and an understanding
of where wealth was extracted and privilege established,
is an important prerequisite to establishing a
more equitable world, as opposed to fabricating a
" war on woke " on those that have the temerity to challenge
an orthodox, white-washed account of colonial
exploitation, oppression or atrocities (see [2], [3]).
On a different scale, and if it were at all possible,
it would be good if whenever a client connected to
an http server, or indeed any app connected with
a central server, the server responded with a corresponding
acknowledgment of data, along the lines of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2022.3173327
Date of current version: 14 June 2022.
6
0278-0097/22©2022 IEEE
" Before we begin our session this morning, I would
like to acknowledge the traditional owner of the data
which is being transferred, and respect rights to privacy,
identity, location, attention and personhood. "
The analogy being pursued here is that to some
indigenous peoples, the idea of " someone owning
land " is akin to asking " what is north of the north
pole, " or " what is outside the universe " : conceptually,
it just does not make sense. In a less possessive
frame of reference, rather than land belonging to
people, the people belonged to the land. The idea
that someone could erect a fence and declare " this is
mine, " or even worse " this is the Queen's " ( " royalty "
being an even more citizenship-demeaning social
construct than land ownership), that everything
which grew or lived within that fence was also theirs
and that someone else could go as far as the fence
and no further, was essentially nonsensical.
This inversion of a natural relationship is informative,
if instead of " land " one thinks of " data, " especially
data in the context of human beings making
the transition from data processor, to both data processor
(through sensory perception) and data generator.
And by data generator, this is not just a work
of mind as a product of conscious creativity that
actually provides rights in the form of intellectual
property, but also: every action that someone takes;
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022

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