Technology and the law of unintended consequences
It is always a conundrum; which comes first the technology or the demand for its application? Many of us lived happily without smartphones, in fact we didn’t even know we needed one. Flash forward to the 4th generation of iphones, the latest blackberries and androids and it is difficult to imagine life without them.
Technology also creates the potential for adaptation ad application in ways never imagined by the engineers that designed them. Such is the case of GPS in even the most basic of current cell phones and its impact on the remote Bedouins in Mauritania. The Bedouins had a unique skill of being able to track people through the remote desert. Such valuable skills were utilized by governments and private parties to located missing or in some cases hiding individuals.
These traditional skills are now less in demand due to increasing cell phone coverage of these remote areas. People who are lost can call for help. People attempting to hide can now be monitored and tracked using their phones. I doubt anyone in the labs at the major cell phone company foresaw that possibility.
Despite the important position they have been occupying in Mauritania for a long time, trackers agree to losing ground to technology as the prevalence of cell phones is remarkably reducing the demand on tracking, said Mahmoud weld el-Mena, a famous tracker in northern Mauritania.
“Mobile phone companies are increasing coverage in the desert and this makes people resort less to trackers,” he told Al Arabiya. “When people get lost, those looking for them give them a call and the problem is solved.”
Weld el-Mena said that in the past he used to work in crimes like theft and murder and the police depended on him and his fellow trackers whenever the desert was the crime scene.
“Now I am basically asked to look for lost people and cattle or at most to follow someone who attacked a village or stole some camels.”
The advancement of investigation tools and the emergence of modern ways to follow criminals, weld el-Mena added, also contributed to making the trackers’ job redundant.
“Now the police are equipped with high-tech devices that track people and identify criminals.”
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