Digital fire

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME TO PULVERIZE AN ENTIRE ERA…

About a week ago the New York Times broke the news that Elon Musk's ambitious project, aimed at connecting the most remote areas of the planet through the launch of 6,000 low-orbit satellites, had definitively achieved its goal. Now it has become possible to connect to the Internet even from the heart of the Amazon forest, one of the areas of the world that have remained isolated until now. I won't deny that the news worried me, if only because I fear that this technological success, beyond the jubilation of all-out progressives, actually hides not only long-term risks that sooner or later we will no longer be able to ignore.
The first fruits can already be seen immediately. It being understood that already during the first phase of testing of the coverage network, one of the surviving native peoples who lived in total isolation close to an area of ​​the Brazilian jungle, the indigenous tribe of the Marubo, who had never had contact with civilization, despite herself, she underwent a lightning evolutionary leap of at least ten thousand years concentrated in just nine months: the pregnancy of a potential monster! Those like me who have had the privilege of visiting and coming into contact with those people know that, by their own choice, they have decided to continue fighting for the sacrosanct right to live their existence, supporting their millenary culture and ancestral beliefs to defense of their territory. 
Our civilization, only out of opportunism and material speculation, claims to be its own that which belongs only to them, the natives, the true custodians of their land. Evolved birds of prey – be it a politician, trafficker or speculator – should stay at a safe distance. I knew it would be a matter of time, now the confirmation comes eighteen years after my first expedition to the protected reserve in Xingu in 2006.
An anecdote. I remember well the moment we crossed that stretch of road after the Sierra del Roncador in central Brazil, when my Nokia mobile phone - one of the first - lost reception, making us isolated and unreachable for the next fifteen days. A state of euphoria and exhilaration now impossible to describe in light of what then became the norm, which forced us all to always communicate and still be available, even reluctantly,. I thus came into contact with an evolved yet spartan world, which had as its only rule that of living and respecting the delicate balance between essential nature and the human being. 
Even though we are aware of the existence of Coca-Cola, cars, and everything that we now consider indispensable to maintain our lifestyle and our modern well-being, it is good to know that those we call "Indios" (a among the many to distinguish those who are different from us, that they) have never refused to evaluate the possible inclusion of a novelty or a curious technological object, as long as it was considered useful by the community. Living in isolation does not mean not knowing how things are going in the world; If necessary, the Indians have always been able to reach an urban center on foot or by canoe. So they know about the existence of the Internet, given that almost always in their villages there is at least one TV powered by a petrol generator: once a month they all gather together, around a fire, to watch a football match.
Nine months were enough to turn the lives of entire communities upside down, young people no longer want to paint their bodies, they don't fish, they don't hunt and they don't cultivate the land, much preferring to stay closed in their huts, bowed over their luminous screens to chat with the rest of the world or to consult pornographic sites. The elderly people who are upset, because they feel apathy as well as change and fear the disappearance of their existence, are the same ones who beg their Western interlocutor not to have the Internet taken away from them! And what do government bodies like funai, which were supposed to protect and educate them, have to say? Do they know who provided these indigenous people with the smartphones and solar panels that make connection possible? This is the most dangerous fire, destined to burn not only a portion of land, but the entire Amazon.

Luca Periotto
NP June/July 2024