An article in the December 2005 issue of Current Anthropology by Claudio Aporta and Eric Higgs called "Satellite Culture: Global Positioning Systems, Inuit Wayfinding, and the need for a new account of technology" discusses what happens when traditional methods of maintaining geographic knowledge become affected by the adoption of new technologies. Alfred North Whitehead in Introduction to Mathematics (1911) said "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them". Authors Aporta and Higgs argue that we ought to think about the repercussions of the use of technology in certain circumstances--maybe in most circumstances. What social and cultural losses are incurred, they ask, when traditional methods of lifeways are altered by the use of modern technologies?
GPS and Wayfinding Global Positioning System (or GPS) technology is relatively new; and before recent refinements was little used by most people in the world. Today, GPS receivers are capable of real-time accuracy within centimeters in three dimensions; GPS receivers are so common in the west today they are found as equipment in new automobiles and used in GPS orienteering games, called geocaching.
Alternatively, wayfinding is a mode of travel made possible by the intimate social and cultural knowledge about the geography of a region. Traditional Inuit wayfinding includes knowledge of a network of place names, wind behavior, snowdrift patterns, animal behavior, tidal cycles, ocean currents and astronomical phenomena. This knowledge is not written down, but rather transferred from generation to generation by experience, during hunting expeditions or training sessions. GPS equipment has been recently adopted by some people in varying degrees of intensity in some Inuit communities. Of course, GPS is not the only addition to the technology of the Inuit: the Inuit live in the 21st century, with formal education, electronic communications, and wage labor; not to mention rifles and snowmobiles.
Read more of the article here.
Source Material
Claudio Aporta and Eric Higgs. 2005. Satellite Culture: Global Positioning Systems, Inuit Wayfinding, and the need for a new account of technology. Current Anthropology 46(5):729-753. Abstract on line.
Photo credits: Nunavut landscape: Sam Fakhreddine, White out in Nunavut, Patrick Smillie
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