IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 6

EDITORIAL

Katina Michael

n the 9th of December in 2015, I set out
for a camping trip
with my three young
children to the Sapphire Coast of Australia, toward the
New South Wales and Victorian border (Figure 1). The last time I had
driven through this stunning part
of the world, was when my parents
decided to take their four children
across country in a Ford Cortina
station wagon to visit their first
cousins on apricot and citrus farms
in South Australia.
I turned eight years of age over
that summer, and the memories of
that trip are etched into our hearts.
We've laughed countless times over
events on that holiday, all of which
were borne from a "lack of access"
to technology, resulting in "closeness" and "togetherness." Loxton,

Gone Fishing
Breaking with the Biometric Rhythm
of Tech-Centricism

choice - we welcomed every opportunity to physically help our cousins
gather fruit using nothing but ladders and our bare hands.
It was the festive season, and
I remember lots and lots of family gatherings, parties, and outdoor
lamb-spit barbecues. We gathered
to eat, and dance, and our elders
reminisced over
what life was like
in the village in
Greece, and tell us
funny stories about
Everyone lived in the moment.
grow ing up w ith
hardly any material
No one took pictures of their
possessions. Highfood to post to Instagram.
lights included: when
a photographer visited the village once
South Australia, only had two teleevery other year to take pictures
vision channels back then- the ABC
with his humungous boxed contrapnews, and 5A which showed endless
tion, which he would hide behind;
games and replays of cricket. While
the memory of the first time a car
we grew to love cricket - we had no
was spotted trying to come into the
village; walking to school one hour
away with shoes made out of goat
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2618738
Date of publication: 12 December 2016
skin (if not barefoot); and the harsh

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

unheated winters and boiling hot
summers over scenic Sparta.
It was a kind of celebration of life
when I think back. It was so carefree, clean and pure, and joyous!
Everyone lived in the moment. No
one took pictures of their food to
post to Instagram, no one had their
head buried in front of a screen
watching YouTube on demand, and
we were outside in the fresh air
awestruck by the beauty of the glistening stars that shone so bright
in the night sky (and getting bitten by mosquitos while doing so).
It was a kind of SnapChat without
the "Snap." On that trip I gained
an appreciation for the land, and
its importance in sustaining us as
human beings.
As I reflect on that time, we travelled through remote parts of Australia with nothing but ourselves.
We were too poor to stay at hotels,
so dad ingeniously turned our station-wagon into a caravan, or so it
seemed to us when the back seat
folded forward and the travelling
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DECEmber 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016