Last week Genevieve Bell, an Intel funded anthropologist, came to Purdue to lecture on wireless technologies connection to the spiritual. One of the things she said that I found most humorous was her association of how people use wifi and and cargo cults. Cargo cults are religious movements found primarily in the South Pacific that believe if they enact certain behaviors (usually modeled on technologically superior Caucasian visitors) then the gods will provide them with gifts and tangible goods. Bell notes that people often behave this way with laptops and other wireless devices in that they boot it up and look for a network and just hope that one is available. The mere act of booting up is a ritual that is intended to bring the network. She notes that on a very fundamental level the public doesn't understand wireless technologies and that it takes upon an element of magic and mysticism. The implication is that our behavior is more rooted in an intuitive mystical understanding of the world.
Labels: anthropology, cellphone, ethnography, magic, religion, wifi
