Testing-in-the-wild: Innovation nationalism and the colonial dynamics of new technology testbeds

This article examines the phenomenon of the AI testbed and practices of testing-in-the-wild. It combines historical and sociological approaches to understand how the settler-colony of Australia has come to be treated as an ideal test site, using commercial drone delivery company Wing Aviation as a case study. It connects the figuration of Australia as contemporary testbed with histories of the nation as a colonial experiment. I argue that this historical frame has been consistently deployed to justify the treatment of lands and peoples as experimental subjects across a range of domains—from medical science, penal management, and military operations. In doing so, I show how Australia has been treated as a test site and Australians as test subjects based on changing imaginaries of the nation and its people—from proxies for whiteness and Empire in the colonial period, to multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in the contemporary era.