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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how indigenous temporal concepts can be stored in digital systems. Focusing on the Tzeltal (Mexico) and Yupno (PapuaNewGuinea) languages, it shows how uphill/downhill time metaphors challenge Western-biased infrastructures and can inform more inclusive, non-colonial data storage

Paper long abstract

Long before computers and digital systems were used to store information, society employed various other methods. For instance, the Roman census in Egypt and other texts on clay or papyrus illustrate that the need to store and index information has existed since the very beginning of the world civilization.

In recent decades, the Western world has developed the technology and infrastructure necessary to run computers and store information. The heterogeneity of information storage solutions, from mobile phones to data centers, underlines our lack of control over where and how our information is stored.

An emerging negative side-effect is that those systems primarily support a Western way of thinking. Since their foundation, software companies have embedded various colonial biases in their solutions. For instance, structures of information were built that did not include support for indigenous knowledge practices, such as storytelling, and Western working hours defined the format of the electronic calendar. Therefore, it has proven difficult to represent indigenous knowledge when technology is used (Christie, 2005), which has a ripple effect on social inclusion.

Using a post-humanistic theoretical framework, this paper discusses how different indigenous representations of time can challenge Western-biased infrastructures and support more inclusive, non-colonial data storage.

The primary example used in this study is the linguistic representation of time going uphill (i.e., the future) and downhill (i.e., the past). This linguistic representation is used by the remote “Tzeltal”-speaking rural community of Tenejapa, in Chiapas, Mexico and in the “Yupno”-speaking area of Papua New Guinea (Cooperrider, 2022).