Every day, it seems, technology’s role in our lives grows larger. In Maine the global positioning system (GPS) allows island students to map their neighborhoods and watersheds. Integrated into a geographic information system (GIS), this technology helps students create realistic electronic models that will enable their communities plan for the future. Websites and the Internet, coupled with still other systems, allow island fishermen to track where their lobsters are going in the marketplace, while these same technologies make it possible for faraway consumers to learn where their lobster dinners originated.
At Memorial University in Newfoundland, meanwhile, a tank simulates what happens when certain types of fishing gear are towed through the water: what stays in the cod end, what escapes, how nets might be re-designed to reduce bycatch.
The electronic mapping and tracking technologies and the Newfoundland tank, of course, represent only new or recent applications of technology. History can be viewed as a series of technological developments, each making it possible for people to do something they couldn’t do before – hunt, fish, exploit resources, build, travel, explore. Learning older technologies, in fact, is a valuable part of anyone’s education.
In Maine coastal and island communities the examples of this kind of technological learning are everywhere: in boat shops and fish houses, aboard fishing boats, in workshops, in gardens and on farms, in libraries and community centers where elders and others with knowledge pass down the skills and methods they have learned. Old or new, using technology is all about remembering – and often improving on – skills and techniques mastered over the generations.
At the same time it’s important to understand that we can’t count on technology to benefit us. The GPS satellites that provide pinpoint data for neighborhood mapping are also capable of guiding a bomb to its destination. The shipbuilding methods, sonar and radar that make going to sea so much easier have also contributed to the depletion of fish stocks. And now we have a further new, disturbing evidence that PCBs, a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels, are reaching unacceptable levels in farmed salmon – a case of technology doing undeniable harm.
Human beings will – and must – continue to invent things and make technological advances. Over time, we can only hope that the systems they invent and refine will do more good than harm.