C u r r e n t A n t h r o p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
! 2005 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2005/4605-0002$10.00
Satellite Culture
Global Positioning Systems,
Inuit Wayfinding, and the Need
for a New Account of
Technology
by Claudio Aporta and Eric Higgs
Inuit hunters of the Igloolik region orient themselves on the land
by understanding wind behaviour, snowdrift patterns, animal be-
haviour, tidal cycles, currents, and astronomical phenomena. In-
uit wayfinding methods are burdensome to learn, requiring years
of quiet tutoring and experience, but are perfectly reliable. Con-
cern arose in the mid-1990s that younger, less experienced hunt-
ers were beginning to rely too heavily on mechanized convey-
ances and electronic navigational aids. The use of global
positioning system (GPS) units, particularly, has been steadily
growing in Igloolik. This paper discusses the changes wrought by
GPS use against the backdrop of interacting social and technolog-
ical change. It argues that an understanding of these changes re-
quires a model of technology that depends on the patterns cre-
ated by devices rather than the devices (or systems of devices)
themselves. A paradigmatic theory of technology based on the
work of the philosopher Albert Borgmann is presented, and a dis-
tinction is made between technology that is physically and so-
cially engaging and technology that reduces engagement with ex-
perience of the land, people, and local knowledge. It is suggested
that there is a risk of turning landscapes into constructed enti-
ties or commodities, which is what happens figuratively when
we are too attentive to the map and not the territory.
c l a u d i o a p o r t a is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Can-
ada (claudio_aporta@carleton.ca). Born in 1968, he was educated
at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (B.A., 1994) and the Uni-
versity of Alberta (Ph.D., 2003). He is currently creating a multi-
media CD-ROM in bilingual format illustrating important as-
pects of the environmental knowledge of the Igloolik Inuit that
may be used to supplement well-established hands-on approaches
to the transmission of that knowledge. His publications include
“Routes, Trails, and Tracks: Trail-breaking among the Inuit of Ig-
loolik” (Inuit Studies 28 [2]) and “Life on the Ice: Understanding
the Codes of a Changing Environment” (Polar Record 38:341–54).
e r i c s . h i g g s is Professor and Director of the School of Envi-
ronmental Studies at the University of Victoria. He was born in
1958 and received his B.I.S. from the University of Waterloo in
1979 and his Ph.D. in philosophy and regional planning and re-
sources development from that university in 1988. His research
interests lie in the philosophy, policy, and practice of ecological
restoration, historical ecology, and the philosophy of technology.
Among his publications are “The Two-Culture Problem: Ecologi-
cal Restoration and the Integration of Knowledge” (Restoration
Ecology 13:1–6) and Nature by Design: People, Natural Process,
and Ecological Restoration (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
The present paper was submitted 14 v 04 and accepted 24 iii 05.
If a young person asks a GPS where a certain place
is, that GPS will tell him, tell that young person.
But if that young person approaches an elder and
asks where that certain place is, that elder is going
to go detail by detail, and then describe what is be-
fore that, not necessarily where that is. Describe
“This comes out first, like a bay, a point, an inuk-
suk [rock cairn],” and so on and so forth. As you
progress, they’ll tell you exactly what to expect. And
a youth doesn’t have time for that. He wants to
know where that place is. . . . There are some people
of my age who rely on GPS because their fathers
didn’t sit down with them or took them out on the
land to teach them where to go, how to get there,
what’s dangerous. They haven’t done that. And over
time, if you keep practicing, [Inuit orientation] is al-
most like a science. And maybe it is a science, as a
matter of fact, but nothing written. It’s just mental,
it’s just knowledge passed on from generation to
generation.
— i k u m m a q , 2000
In a grocery store in Igloolik, one of us, Claudio Aporta,
met up with a seventeen-year-old friend who was obvi-
ously in distress. His father had asked him to find a
broken snowmobile left behind several days earlier many
kilometres from town. The young man had been out all
afternoon looking for the machine, which had been cov-
ered by the blowing snow typical for that time of year.
Igloolik is located on a small island of the same name.
The surrounding sea is covered for much of the year by
ice floes which in the winter freeze together to create a
relatively flat but highly variable surface for travel. To
the west is the Melville Peninsula and mainland Nu-
navut (Canada), a landscape without dramatic topogra-
phy (fig. 1).
Difficult by any measure, travelling in this land- and
seascape as the Inuit people have done for millennia re-
quires a sophisticated knowledge of subtle qualities:
coastline shape, stone cairns, snowdrifts, wind direction,
currents, animal movements, dreams, and other clues
(MacDonald 1998, Aporta 2003). Elders report tough jour-
neys, challenging circumstances, and long waits in fog
and whiteouts, but the idea of being lost or unable to
find one’s way is without basis in experience, language,
or understanding—that is, until recently.
In asking him to look for the disabled snowmobile, the
young man’s father was not asking anything unusual. He
gave his son oral directions, which included Inuit place-
names and references to wind directions. The son did
his best, but after hours of searching in unforgiving con-
ditions he returned distraught to Igloolik. Aporta had
been travelling with the father earlier when the machine
broke down and had recorded the location with a portable
global positioning system (GPS) receiver. Remarkable for
its small size and ease of use, the hand-held device de-
pends on a complicated system of satellites, ground sta-
tions, control networks, electronic receivers, and com-
munications protocols that provides location in three
coordinates accurate to within a few metres anywhere
729
730 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
Fig. 1. The geographic situation of Igloolik.
on the surface of the planet. Working with a straight-
forward electronic mapping program, Aporta printed a
map with the exact location of the disabled machine.
With map in hand the next day, the young man went
directly to the location.
This is not a simple story of the triumph of techno-
logical sophistication or a lament for the demise of tra-
ditional knowledge. Both the young man and Aporta
would be lost, literally and figuratively, without the GPS.
As with any complicated device, a mere glitch in its
operation—a dead battery, loss of the device, a malfunc-
tion—immediately turns a circumstance of technologi-
cal security into a potential disaster. While GPS tech-
nology is remarkable for locating specific sites, recording
a travel route, establishing relationships of known
points, or finding a route home, it does not, of course,
provide knowledge about how to travel safely. Inuit way-
finding methods are burdensome to learn, requiring years
of quiet tutoring and experience, but are perfectly reli-
able. This is the kind of knowledge that cannot be ac-
quired from books, maps, or electronics.
Much has changed in the Igloolik region in the past
40 years as Canadian government modernization and re-
settlement programs have abruptly ended centuries-old
nomadic living patterns. Many elders who are active to-
day were born on the land and have lived according to
long-established ways. The arrival of formal education,
stores, commercial transport, electronic communica-

tions, wage labour, and so on, has transformed social
patterns and structures. Adaptation is found in every as-
pect of life: people still hunt for food, for example, but
often on weekend trips by mechanized vehicle. It is more
difficult to communicate Inuit methods of moving about
the land and sea, and many younger people do not have
the depth of knowledge to move about safely. Some
blame technologies such as the GPS for providing ulti-
mately undependable advice and eroding knowledge of
the past, but GPS technology has also been used recently
in Igloolik to rekindle interest in Inuit wayfinding meth-
ods and travelling techniques.
This complex story reveals several issues about tech-
nology that we address in this paper. First, we describe
the deployment of GPS technology in a region of the
circumpolar north where it has been rapidly adopted and
widely used. Our discussion of the changes wrought by
it is presented against the backdrop of interacting social
and technological change. Despite the power, allure, and
rapid distribution of GPS technology worldwide, few
people have examined its social and cultural implica-
tions. Second, we interpret GPS technology in Igloolik
in relation to the impacts of other technological intro-
ductions in Inuit communities, specifically the rifle and
the snowmobile. We then introduce the theory of the
“device paradigm” developed by the philosopher Albert
Borgmann. Borgmann proposes the existence of a pattern
intrinsically linked to modern technology that tends to
disengage us physically and socially from activities and
objects that matter deeply to individuals and commu-
nities. By using Borgmann’s theory, enriched by the eth-
nographic data we present here, we conclude that tech-
nology is best understood ecologically, that is, as a
system of sociotechnical relationships. GPS technology,
we believe, is a paradigmatic example of a particular way
of taking up with the world.
The central questions that must be asked of GPS and,
indeed, of all technology is how it can respect engage-
ment—the direct relationship that exists when people
such as Inuit hunters are aware of and prepared for the
continuity, fragility, complexity, and difficulty of living
close to the environment. When is loss of engagement
crucial? How are adoption and rejection of new devices
negotiated? Failure to address such questions, we be-
lieve, leads to the erosion of social integrity and under-
standing of the significance of the places that support
us. Indeed, our incapacity and inexperience in dealing
with the moral and material consequences of new tech-
nology have created a hazardous laissez-faire approach.
These questions can be asked anywhere, but in few
places are the answers more striking and consequential
than in a place like Igloolik.
We acknowledge that there is a risk in using philo-
sophical assumptions to analyse ethnographic realities.
We are convinced, however, that the world of technology
has become so intrinsically entangled, so globally inter-
connected, so pervasive, and so difficult to understand
that such fundamental exploration needs to be under-
taken and such generalization risked. This is not a
merely theoretical enterprise, as technology has already
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 731
become the setting in which much of our daily lives take
place.
Wayfinding among the Inuit
Inuit wayfinding and orienting methods have received
the attention of ethnographers, explorers, and popular
writers, attracted by the fact that Inuit usually travel
across extensive and sometimes indistinct territories
without using maps or instruments. Focusing on diverse
geographic locations across the Arctic, studies by Nelson
(1969), Carpenter (1973), and Simeon (1983) constitute
systematic attempts to describe this aspect of Inuit cul-
ture. Valuable information is also found in ethnographic
studies and explorers’ reports, notably, Parry (1969
[1824]), Lyon (1970 [1823]), Boas (1974 [1888]), Mathias-
sen (1976 [1928]), Rasmussen (1976 [1929]), Stefánsson
(1912), Hall (1864), and Freuchen (1961). In Igloolik, Mac-
Donald (1998) and Aporta (2002, 2003, 2004) have de-
scribed the different aspects of Inuit spatial orienting and
wayfinding methods.
Inuit orient themselves on the land by understanding
wind behaviour, snowdrift patterns, animal behaviour,
tidal cycles, currents, and astronomical phenomena
(MacDonald 1998). One of us (Aporta 2003) has shown
elsewhere how all these methods are understood and
used in connection to a few spatial referents of which
the most important is the one determined by prevailing
winds. MacDonald identified vocabulary that recognizes
16 bearings in relation to four wind directions: uangnaq
(west-northwest), kanangnaq (north-northeast), akinnaq
(south-southwest), and nigiq (east-southeast). These
bearings constitute a wind-compass that Inuit use to sit-
uate objects, describe locations, and locate people’s rel-
ative positions while travelling. Winds are not, however,
reliable indicators in themselves, as wind variations or
shifts frequently go unnoticed. Inuit rely, therefore, on
snowdrifts shaped by different prevailing winds and
showing several distinctive forms. One in particular (the
uqalurait), shaped by the prevailing wind uangnaq, is
the principal orienting aid in Igloolik, pointing west-
northwest.
In contrast to the situation in other regions of the Arc-
tic, ephemeral maps drawn on the snow or the sand have
rarely been used in Igloolik. Even today, older hunters
scarcely ever use maps to travel, as trails and places are
described by using precise spatial terms available in the
Inuit language (Inuktitut), place-names, and references
to known spatial frames, especially wind directions. The
Inuit in Igloolik do not have institutionalized training
related to navigation. Hunters learn from their own ex-
perience while travelling with knowledgeable elders and
through conversations with experienced relatives and
friends. Each hunter’s learning process, however, de-
pends on his own context (MacDonald 1998). A common
training method consists of asking younger boys where
such-and-such a place is located. These questions are
asked during tea breaks while travelling with snowmo-
biles, in a pause after a hunt, during conversations at
732 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
camping spots, or after pursuing a caribou or a walrus.
Before snowmobiles came into use, the slower and more
silent travel pace of dog sleds made travelling itself an
ideal context for teaching and learning geographic and
other environmental knowledge.
The typical Inuit’s knowledge of geographic and en-
vironmental surroundings is impressive. Some Inuit are
familiar with thousands of kilometres of trails and re-
member uncountable landmarks and details of the land.
Since the Inuit approach to geography is mainly oral,
specific locations are identified by positioning them in
reference to landmarks seen on the horizon through the
use of wind bearings. All across the territory of Nunavut,
furthermore, Inuit possess extensive knowledge of place-
names that is frequently used in describing locations and
travel trajectories. Travellers going to well-known hunt-
ing and fishing destinations and to other communities
frequently follow routes that have been used from time
immemorial. Trails are broken every year on fresh snow,
but such ephemeral tracks follow precise geographic
courses that are transmitted from generation to genera-
tion through oral means (Aporta 2004). To perform such
oral descriptions Inuit use precise terminology to de-
scribe land and ice features, wind directions, snow and
ice conditions, and place-names. Given the enormous
importance of geographic knowledge among the Inuit,
we believe that the analysis of the introduction and use
of GPS technology in Igloolik reveals some complex di-
mensions of the relationships established between peo-
ple and technology and especially of the particular char-
acter of contemporary technology.
Global Positioning Systems in Igloolik
GPS technology in Igloolik is recent, the first units hav-
ing shown up in the mid-1990s. Use was tentative at
first, especially given the need, before 2000, for correc-
tion for deliberate random error in the satellite signals.
GPS technology was originally developed by the United
States as a navigation system for military purposes
(which explains the pre-2000 signal error). Later it was
adopted by surveyors for navigation and to establish pre-
cise positions. Its virtue is its extraordinary accuracy,
with professional units capable of real-time measure-
ments with centimetre accuracy in three dimensions.
GPS receivers are primarily used for navigation and sur-
veying, but their applications are widespread, from ro-
botics to telecommunications and anywhere that spatial
data are required.
As a navigational instrument, the GPS receiver is not
affected by the proximity of magnetic North, a problem
that undermines the usefulness of the magnetic compass
in Arctic latitudes. The use of the technology in the
Arctic, however, does face some limitations related to
very cold temperatures and lack of light in the winter.
Extreme cold makes it a challenge to keep the batteries
warm (this problem is usually solved by placing the unit
underneath several layers of clothing). Even if one man-
ages to keep the batteries warm, under usual winter con-
ditions the screen freezes up in a matter of seconds, and
only basic operations can be performed before the infor-
mation on the screen becomes illegible. Despite these
limitations, the use of GPS receivers is steadily growing
in Igloolik. In 1998, when the research for this paper was
started, approximately 40 Inuit hunters in the settlement
owned GPS receivers, and roughly 20–30 were actually
using or learning to use them. Several of the units had
been given away by the manufacturer with the purchase
of an all-terrain vehicle. Some hunters had purchased
their units from one of the two stores in town, some had
ordered them through the Igloolik Research Centre,
and others had obtained them directly from mail-order
sports-supply outfits.
These early models required knowledge of geographic
coordinates and some training to operate them. The Ig-
loolik Research Centre developed an educational CD-
ROM and offered courses about the use of GPS. Both the
CD-ROM and the courses were offered in Inuktitut and
focused on map-reading, coordinate systems such as lat-
itude/longitude and Universal Transverse Mercator, and
the operational basics of the GPS. The Canadian Rangers
(a volunteer militia) have also organized several courses
on map-reading and GPS use. High-school teachers, out
of personal motivation, have also included GPS training
in survival courses. Hunters of all ages are enthralled by
the device’s ability to store precise locations. Most hunt-
ers, however, found the geographic information required
for operating these earlier receivers too abstract, and
some of them barely used their GPS receivers. Some re-
ceivers had never been initialized (used for navigation).
Since 2000 the situation has changed substantially.
The Hunters and Trappers Association made available a
new GPS model at a wholesale price, and the cessation
of differential correction in May 2000 meant that hand-
held units costing less than $500 could deliver highly
accurate real-time spatial information. Most contem-
porary models provide a user-friendly operative system
and map-display capabilities that offer good topographic
detail when the base maps are uploaded from a computer
(a service offered free of charge by the Igloolik Research
Centre at the time of our study). Other models with map
displays are ordered from the local stores and through
mail order. It is difficult to know the actual number of
active GPS receivers in town, but we can safely say that
the number of GPS units is continually growing, that
most people in town have access to GPS receivers at least
through members of their families, and that every hunter
in town has seen the GPS at work.
Concern arose in the late 1990s that younger, less ex-
perienced hunters were beginning to rely too heavily on
mechanized conveyances and electronic navigational
aids. Without a background in long-established Inuit
wayfinding and survival skills, a single mechanical fail-
ure—the breakdown of a snowmobile—could lead to a
catastrophic accident. The circumstances grew serious
with several fatal and near-fatal incidents that were
highly publicized at the local level. Some attempts were
made to rekindle interest in Inuit methods, but such
approaches did not always work with younger travellers

thoroughly immersed in new circumstances produced by
life in town, electronic communication, and different
priorities. The Igloolik Research Centre’s training pro-
gram for GPS use was premised on the reintroduction of
traditional knowledge through that training, elaborating
the fascination with the GPS into a comprehensive un-
derstanding of travel and survival in a severe landscape.
No formal evaluation of the program is available, but
there is evidence that the approach did in fact inspire
both a rise in the number of GPS units in active use and
a heightened interest in Inuit wayfinding methods.
It is difficult to describe a definite pattern or a way of
using GPS receivers in Igloolik, as the circumstances of
hunters differ. As a rule, unilingual Inuktitut-speaking
Inuit who have not gone through formal schooling and
who grew up on the land and not in settlements do not
use GPS receivers. Knowledgeable full-time or part-time
hunters of various ages use them a supplementary
navigational tool. Younger hunters, with less knowledge
of Inuit methods, are starting to use GPS receivers more
intensively and are already changing some travel pat-
terns.
In general, hunters use GPS receivers mostly to create
waypoints for their trips. Only recently have some hunt-
ers begun to record trails with the tracking or route func-
tions of their GPS units. In the winter of 2000, a hunter
in his mid-forties had created the following waypoints
in his GPS unit: seven hunting destinations (mostly cab-
ins), the settlement of Igloolik, one caribou cache, and
one broken sled. Conversations and interviews with sev-
eral hunters suggest that this waypoint list is quite typ-
ical. Although some hunters are able to enter the coor-
dinates for the waypoints manually, in advance of a trip,
most of them create the waypoints on location simply
pressing “Enter” or “Mark” on their receivers.
Iyerak, a knowledgeable hunter in his late forties, re-
ported that on one occasion he was travelling with an
elder, Lukie Airut, during a bad blizzard. They had been
hunting caribou, and Airut was leading the way back to
the cabin (on the southern shore of a long lake) under
very poor visibility. Airut knew that Iyerak had stored
the cabin’s location in his GPS receiver but did not ask
for it until the very last. Iyerak (2000) remembered that
the wind was from the southeast. And going down
that slope there were hills and there were rocks, and
we only could see a few feet away. To me, it looked
like the wind was changing every few hours, and
since he was the elder we were following him. . . .
And only when he had come to the lake where the
cabin was, he asked me to take [the travel party] to
the cabin, because with my GPS I could go right to
the cabin. But if we hadn’t used it we would have
guessed and used the coast to get to the cabin.
Iyerak’s story is typical of the way many Inuit use their
GPS receivers. Even under poor visibility, blizzards pro-
vide some spatial clues (the direction from which the
wind is blowing) which help experienced hunters to find
their way and keep their bearings. The precise location
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 733
of a particular spot in a blizzard, however, is much more
difficult to determine and must be done in relation to a
larger target (in this case the lake’s southern shore). In
some situations hunters would simply give up and make
camp until the visibility improved. The GPS, in contrast,
allows travelling and reaching precise targets under any
type of visibility.
During a February 2001 caribou hunting trip in which
Aporta participated, the hunter leading the group was
forced to leave a sled in one of the flattest and most-
visually-indistinct regions of Melville Peninsula. Aporta
made a waypoint with his GPS receiver, storing the pre-
cise location of the sled. Two days later, the hunter,
knowledgeable of the fact that Aporta had stored the
location, led the way until he reached the place where
he knew the sled was approximately located. Without
the GPS he would have traveled in concentric circles
until he had found the sled; instead, however, he asked
Aporta to lead the way from there. The GPS revealed
that the sled was 0.9 km to the north (fig. 2). To remem-
ber the sled’s approximate location, the hunter had
looked at the position on the horizon of the only visible
landmark (a hill called Kinngatuaq), estimated the dis-
tance (in relation to the relative size of the hill), and
determined the relative position of the sled through the
use of snowdrifts (fig. 3). Similarly, some hunters are
creating waypoints at their meat caches or at places
where they have left a piece of equipment.
One of the activities most frequently mentioned by
GPS users and one in which the receivers are most ap-
preciated is walrus hunting in the summer. Walrus is
one of the main food sources in Igloolik, and hunting
walrus is an expensive activity requiring large quantities
of fuel for long boat trips. Most walrus hunts begin at a
summer camp southeast of the present settlement (fig.
4). Hunters leave the camp when weather and tides per-
mit and usually head southeast. Walrus are usually found
resting on floating ice far from the coast in a region where
landmarks cannot be seen as referent points for navi-
gation (fig. 5). One of the problems of walrus hunting
with motorboats is to calculate how much gas one needs
to hunt, load the walrus, and return to camp. A suc-
cessful hunter needs to have enough room in the boat
to bring the animal back without capsizing and at the
same time have enough gas for the return trip. A good
estimate of gasoline consumption, therefore, is crucial.
Knowledgeable elders usually participate in the walrus
hunts, and they can find their way back by using various
environmental clues. Experienced hunters are able to
maintain their orientation at all times even after chasing
a walrus in circles and turning around floating ice. A
good hunter finds his way back to the camp, usually
using a technique similar to the one used during bliz-
zards described above. The hunter will sight the island’s
shore and then correct bearings to find the camp. If the
shore is not in sight, bearings will be determined by using
animals’ patterns of travel, wind direction, and, espe-
cially, tidal direction as observed in floating seaweed.
Several gallons of valuable gasoline are sometimes used
in bearing corrections, which are protracted if the visi-
734 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
Fig. 2. The trip in search of a broken sled as recorded by a GPS unit.
bility is poor. More gasoline is also spent if less ex-
perienced hunters make relatively inaccurate spatial
decisions.
GPS technology quickly gained popularity in the com-
munity partly because of its ability to bring walrus hunt-
ers back to their camps in a straight line regardless of
environmental conditions and hunters’ navigational
skills. George Qulaut (2000), a knowledgeable hunter and
GPS user in his late forties, said that when he saw a GPS
receiver for the first time he was hesitant: “If I remember
correctly, I think I told [the director of the Igloolik Re-
search Centre] that I would never try to use a GPS. I
wanted to use the traditional knowledge. But after seeing
it how it worked [during summer boat travel], I got very
curious and interested, and I wanted to compare it, so I
became attached to it.”
The first time Qulaut saw GPS technology at work
was during a walrus hunt in which he was driving the
boat. The rest of the crew consisted of his brother-in-
law, his uncle Satuqsi (an elder), and a younger relative.
It was foggy, and his brother-in-law had a GPS receiver.
“We had two walrus on the canoe, and there was a lot
of . . . ice close to the shore. And [we] were going along
Alarniq and then trying to come back to Igloolik. It be-
came very, very foggy. And it was dead calm, absolutely
no wind.” The travellers found floating ice that they
recognized as having been recently detached from the
coast. This clue allowed Satuqsi to determine where the
coast was and also the approximate location of Igloolik.
Qulaut’s brother-in-law, in turn, used his GPS receiver
to point exactly where Igloolik was. Satuqsi agreed with
the instrument’s reading but insisted on following the
coast because he anticipated that they were going to find
floating ice on their way if they followed a straight line
to the settlement. “Both were correct all the time, [but]
if I had followed the GPS, it would have taken me further
out, because we would have been stuck between the ice
. . . so [the GPS] would have been okay if there was no
ice, and [the elder’s decision] was okay because there was
ice, so that was very interesting for all of us.”
Fog is considered the most demanding orienting chal-
lenge in Igloolik. Even experienced hunters prefer to stop
until it clears up, and only those who have the knowl-
edge to read the tides can actually find their way while
travelling by boat in open water. During thick spring fog,
while travelling on the sea ice, establishing bearings is
virtually impossible, as all spatial referents and all en-
vironmental clues disappear. GPS receivers, which de-
pend not on environmental clues but on satellite signals
to determine locations and bearings, are ideal instru-
ments under such conditions. One of the most respected
elders in Igloolik, Herve Paniaq, stated that under foggy

Fig. 3. A view of the land around Igloolik.
conditions and no wind he would stop and wait for the
fog to lift. “Nowadays,” he added, “people can travel
even in the fog using a GPS, and get to a place where
they were trying to go” (2000). Not surprisingly, nearly
all the hunters consulted said that fog is the circum-
stance in which GPS technology becomes more useful.
Theo Ikummaq, for instance, a knowledgeable hunter
and an occasional GPS user, said that he would only use
it if the need arose, “and the need would arise if I am
travelling in a fog, and if I don’t know where I am going.
For example, in a calm day in a boat, where you don’t
have a ripple, seaweeds are not there, then it would be-
come handy” (Ikummaq 2000).
Recent models of GPS receivers with map displays al-
low a new way of using the instrument. Some hunters
are using these map-enabled receivers to see where they
are. The user simply turns on the receiver and waits until
the unit acquires satellite signals and shows him his
position on a built-in map. This use requires only an
understanding of a bird’s-eye view of the territory and
its relationship with the surrounding environment. A
hunter in his early thirties said, “I just turn it on, and I
look at the map. I guess I can tell by the shape of the
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 735
land where I am; then I don’t usually use the numbers,
just look at the maps.” He had owned an older version
which “worked pretty well but I never really used it.”
This mode of using the GPS without knowing much
about geographic coordinates, however, is not unique to
the new models with map displays. As we have seen,
most hunters create their waypoints on location instead
of entering the coordinates manually. If circumstances
prompted them to use their receivers, they would nav-
igate not by coordinates but just by following the direc-
tion indicated by the GPS arrow.
In March 2001, during a meeting of the Inullariit Elders
Association in which Aporta presented some of the re-
sults of his research, the elders attending spontaneously
started a discussion of the GPS, unanimously expressing
their admiration for the navigational instrument and
their worries about its potential effects on younger gen-
erations. Their main concerns were that a GPS receiver
can break and it would be wrong to rely on an instrument
that breaks, that some of the knowledge and skills they
had learned from older generations would get lost as
younger people came to rely more on GPS technology,
and that inexperienced hunters using GPS units might
736 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
Fig. 4. Locations of the summer camp Iglulik and the walrus hunting area.
fall into thin ice or go by very inefficient routes just to
follow the straight course suggested. Similar concerns
were expressed by younger, experienced hunters and oc-
casional GPS users such as Qulaut (2000), Iyerak (2000),
and Ikummaq (2000).
Alianakuluk (2002), an elder who is not a GPS user
himself, expressed a very critical position:
As for myself I regret the fact that they are abandon-
ing their Inukness, the vast knowledge that Inuit
hold is just being put in the back burner; it is for
this I regret the fact that knowledge is going to be
lost. Of course people are free to do as they wish.
The wisdom and knowledge of the Inuit are being
diminished with these gadgets. It is too, too bad.
The knowledge that they hold is slowly being for-
gotten. They [GPS] are very useful tools, there is no
question about that, they can take you straight to
your destination, even in obscured conditions. With
these gadgets you can go straight to your
destination.
This view is based not strictly on cultural reasons but
on the well-being of travellers, as he explained:
One time there was an overdue traveller which be-
came a serious concern to all of us; this was be-
tween here and Sanirajak [Hall Beach]. There was a
real bad blizzard this day. We had met at the Hamlet
Chambers to decide on a course of action. So it was
at that time it was resolved that we should go out
and look at a certain place, hoping that this individ-
ual might be in that area. As a result the GPS was
programmed to that place; the visibility was poor. So
we left with the person with the GPS leading the
way. Because of my experience and knowledge, I
knew that we were going way too straight to the lo-
cation marked on the GPS and I also knew that
there were a lot of pressure ridges in line with our
destination. . . . In addition to this [we were] going
to the direction of the floe-edge. Knowing that we
were heading for obstacles, I decided that I would
try and catch up with the lead with the GPS. . . . I
told him that we are going way too much to the
southerly direction; I told him that we must make a
detour to avoid these obstacles. I told him that I bet-
ter lead the way and I will lead with Inuk knowl-
edge, otherwise we would get to the rough pressure-
ridges field. So I led after that, using snowbanks
created by the prevailing uangnaq wind . . . as my
wayfinders. We did reach our predetermined destina-
tion using my knowledge as an Inuk. Had we just
followed the GPS we would have gone through rug-
ged pressure ridges, then even possibly to the floe-
edge. This would have caused more problems than
help to anyone. That I know for a fact.
Relying on GPS receivers as a main navigational instru-
ment is already producing some changes in the way peo-
ple experience their territory. Many hunters mentioned
that snowmobile tracks left by GPS users on the snow
can be easily recognized because they are straighter than
the well-established routes Inuit of the region have been
using for generations. GPS users tend to take straighter
routes, where they usually face “a difficult time when

Fig. 5. Walrus basking on floating ice, southeast of the island of Igloolik.
they reach a real rough landscape, or it might be ice ridges
that you would not normally travel on” (Alianakuluk
2002).
It could be argued that such reactions may be produced
by the nostalgia and fear of change that are often found
among the elders of every culture. Inuit in Igloolik, how-
ever, are not typical in this sense, for they usually ap-
proach change with an open mind, especially as regards
new technologies. Alianakuluk himself explained how
receptive people were when such new technologies as
the snowmobile or shortwave radios were introduced
(2002). The debate surrounding the introduction of GPS
technology reflects concerns over the loss or deteriora-
tion of some very important skills that Inuit have trans-
mitted by oral means for generations. This deskilling is
accompanied by a diminished relationship with the land
and one increasingly mediated by GPS and other devices.
The use of fast means of transportation and the existence
of new spheres of work and leisure and formal education
amplify the impacts of GPS technology. It is in this set-
ting that its importance can be appreciated.
The widespread acceptance of GPS technology by the
hunters of Igloolik has taken less than a decade. Many
hunters (and other travellers) have adopted GPS units
either for highly specific purposes—emergencies, spe-
cific environmental conditions—or as regular aids to
wayfinding. In the hands of experienced hunters, it
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 737
seems generally the case that GPS units are used only
occasionally. Younger hunters, especially those who
have relatively little knowledge of Inuit wayfinding
methods, are more dependent on them. What is less clear
is the extent to which GPS technology will enhance Inuit
methods of wayfinding or, alternatively, cause disen-
gagement from long-term local knowledge. Those who
are enthusiastic about the technology seem to regard it
as an extension of classical tools, that is, devices that
amplify human ability. Those who are suspicious or cir-
cumspect are worried about the loss of understanding of
the land handed down from one generation to another
or the interlocking consequences of multiple technolo-
gies such as GPS, snowmobiles, radio communication,
and computers. Both accounts are plausible, but it strikes
us that despite the well-known Inuit ability to adapt to
new technologies and new circumstances, GPS technol-
ogy has the potential to deeply modify and cause dis-
engagement from a well-established approach to the geo-
graphic surroundings and to the environment in general.
The technology could eventually allow a less knowl-
edgeable traveller to reach his or her destination in the
same way that the snowmobile permits a wage-earning
Inuk to become a weekend hunter. Both GPS technology
and the snowmobile, therefore, are better understood to-
gether and against the background of technological, eco-
nomic, and social dynamics. One of the main contri-
738 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
butions of contemporary anthropology of technology is
to make it clear that technologies cannot be analyzed
outside of their contexts of production, exchange, and
use. We review these contributions along with historical
evidence of how Inuit have dealt with a number of in-
troduced devices.
An Ecology of Technology
In examining the impact of introduced technologies on
indigenous societies, it has been common to fall into the
theoretical misconception that so-called simple societies
change by virtue of external factors and that such
changes inevitably lead to acculturation and culture loss.
In anthropological thought, such a position was clearly
stated in Steward and Murphy’s (1973) analysis of the
impact of outside factors among the Mundurucú of the
Tapajos River in Brazil and the Northeastern Algonkians
in Canada. They concluded that when industrialized
goods are introduced to certain societies, “the structure
of the native culture will be destroyed, and the final
culmination will be a culture type characterized by in-
dividual families having delimited rights to marketable
resources and linked to the larger nation through trading
centers” (p. 178).
This theoretical paradigm, consisting in describing in-
digenous cultures as unable to deal with outside factors
of change, has influenced the predictions of anthropol-
ogists, ethnographers, popular writers, and moviemakers
about the responses of Inuit and other Arctic peoples to
contact with Western European cultures and the intro-
duction of new technologies. Mathiassen (1976 [1928]),
for instance, predicted that whalers would have a dev-
astating effect on the life of the Inuit, producing com-
plete dependency upon new devices and foods and de-
stroying their traditional ways and institutions. Nelson
(1969:385) pointed out that the availability of food and
material goods from outside was the most important fac-
tor in acculturation and culture loss and that with the
introduction of the rifle (along with other factors) “the
Eskimos began to relax their formerly ambitious quest
for game in favor of an increasingly lazy approach.”
These changes, he forecasted, would destroy the econ-
omy and “place these men and women in a state of cul-
tural limbo.” In his study of the effects of the introduc-
tion of the snowmobile into reindeer herder
communities in Finland, Pelto (1973:12) predicted that
the snowmobile would have devastating effects on north-
ern communities and that this introduction would “tend
to generate inequalities and social stratification.” He
went on to suggest that “it would be advisable to attempt
a return to non-mechanized reindeer herding” (p. 187).
In the same line, Hall (1971:252) thought that the snow-
mobile would “thrust the North Alaskan Eskimos more
firmly into the western lifeway” and that its net effect
almost everywhere would be “the further acculturation
of indigenous populations.”
Such straightforward ideas of social change have for
the most part been successfully challenged in anthro-
pology. For Salzman (1980:6), for instance, social change
is “much less a society becoming something quite dif-
ferent than a society manifesting its fluidity and vari-
ability by reordering its parts, stressing some parts at the
expense of others, and in this fashion, achieving flexi-
bility and adaptability in both form and substance.” In
Inuit studies as elsewhere, simplistic and deterministic
ideas of social change have been refuted and the idea of
“traditional societies” called into question. Wenzel
(1991:27) has produced a convincing argument against
current ideas of tradition, stating that the image of Inuit
as “traditional” is actually “drawn from the accounts of
explorers, traders, and missionaries who observed a
Thule-derived adaptation,” overlooking the fact that “ad-
aptation to new technologies and social features have
also been a part of the Inuit cultural dynamic for at least
one thousand years.” In other words, the common image
of Inuit traditional culture is nothing but a particular
(and arbitrarily frozen) period in the historical develop-
ment of Inuit peoples. Kemp (1971:115) challenged the
predominant ideas of tradition, stating that “if a snow-
mobile is perceived to have greater utility than a dog
sled, then the ownership of a snowmobile will become
one of the criteria defining the traditional Eskimo
hunter.” In fact, technologies such as the rifle, the short-
wave radio, and the snowmobile can be seen as “signs
of the Inuit life: signs of a people who live close to the
land” (Wenzel 1991:15). Stern (2000:10) warns that ref-
erence to Inuit culture or Inuit traditions can become a
form of “ethnostalgia” (a concept that she borrows from
Nelson [1996]), leading to the creation of a fictitious re-
ality in which, for instance, non-hunters are considered
non-Inuit.
Such theoretical developments are essential to under-
stand the change created by the introduction of new tech-
nologies in all its complexity. Societies are not deter-
ministically and predictably changed by the introduction
of new technologies. It would be wrong to assume, how-
ever, that introduced technologies have no impact what-
soever. The pace of introduction is salient, too: the rapid
introduction of many interconnected technologies may
have greater impact than the gradual introduction of one
or a few. By any measure, the pace of technological
change is increasing.
In attempting to understand GPS use in Igloolik we
can learn from the previous introduction into Inuit so-
cieties of two other technologies: the rifle and the snow-
mobile, both of which had an undeniable impact on the
ways Inuit approached animals, hunting, and travelling.
Firearms were first seen by Inuit groups in the Eastern
Canadian Arctic when brought by British explorers at
the beginning of the nineteenth century. They did not
become part of daily Inuit life until the establishment
of trading posts and whaling stations made possible more
permanent contact. In Igloolik, Inuit started to get guns
from Pond Inlet and from the Keewatin area by the 1860s
and 1870s (Rasing 1994:51). Rifles were seen as a major
technological improvement, as their range, power, and
accuracy exceeded those of Inuit hunting weapons. They
did not, however, completely replace the hunting tech-

nology previously used. On the contrary, they were in-
tegrated into former and new ways of hunting, and even
today the harpoon is used alongside the rifle in summer
walrus hunts. The efficiency and long range of firearms
brought to an end some hunting techniques, such as
hunting caribou at crossing points (Balikci 1964:48), and
with it came the incremental disappearance of technol-
ogies such as kayaks, spears for caribou hunting, and
bows and arrows. At the same time, the new character-
istics of this technology made it possible to hunt walrus
and seal from the floe-edge and created a more individ-
ualistic approach to hunting (Mary-Rousselière 1984:
443). For Rasing one of the major effects of the intro-
duction of the rifle in Igloolik was that “hunting in
general became a more objectified and less intimate in-
teraction with nature because animals could be killed
from greater distances and more animals could be se-
cured” (1994:68). Hughes (1965:17) suggested that the
use of rifles “discourages functional dependence upon a
number of the co-operative activities formerly found.”
Rifles represented an improvement in hunting tech-
nology, increasing the possibility of success in the hunt
and, therefore, its productivity, but they need to be un-
derstood within the context of trading and, to some ex-
tent, trapping. Traders brought with them not only the
rifle and ammunition but also myriad items that were
highly appreciated by Inuit populations across the Arctic
(e.g., wooden sleds, canvas tents, steel knives, axes, Pri-
mus stoves, sugar, flour). Trading improved the quality
and length of life of Inuit but also reduced the time avail-
able for hunting as trapping for skins became a signifi-
cant activity. Rifles and ammunition also needed to be
traded. This complex relation between rifles, hunting,
and trading has been clearly explained by Rasing (1994:
63): “A reduction of available hunting time could to
some extent be compensated by the acquisition of more
adequate weapons, which, in fact, was the main reason
for families to engage themselves in trapping.” Firearms,
therefore, were both the result and enforcers of the new
economic context of trading.
In contrast to the rifle, which has occupied a marginal
place in ethnographic and anthropological research, the
snowmobile became a focus of attention as observers
witnessed the very introduction of this new technology.
The snowmobile became the first real alternative to dog-
powered transportation and had visible impacts in sev-
eral spheres of Inuit life. Furthermore, it competed with
dogsledding, a powerful icon of Inuit culture. The first
truly successful snowmobile was developed in the late
fifties by Armand Bombardier, and snowmobiles were
introduced across the Arctic in the 1960s. The machine’s
inherent disadvantages (unreliability [especially in the
first models], noise, dependence on fuel, cost of purchase
and maintenance) were overcome or compensated for as
it completely replaced dogs as means of transportation
across Inuit communities in the North American Arctic.
Inuit became quickly familiar with its mechanics and
were soon able to fix their own machines. To Mary-Rous-
selière, the introduction of the snowmobile in Igloolik
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 739
in 1963 “marked a revolution that rivaled that of the
gun” (1984:444).
Although it could be argued that the adoption of the
snowmobile by Inuit was dramatically rapid, there is am-
ple evidence that both advantages and disadvantages
were weighed and the technology gradually appropriated.
On Bank Island, for instance, Usher (1971) noted that the
Inuit were cautious and selective in the use of the new
technology and that the acceptance of the snowmobile
was gradual. They frequently experimented with both
snowmobiles and dogs. One of the main factors in the
general adoption of the snowmobile was speed, as “in
two hours a hunter on a skidoo can cover what would
be a day’s travel, or more, by dog team” (Smith 1972:2).
Snowmobiles brought with them a series of changes
that ranged from sled design to hunting and travelling
techniques (Hall 1971:237–50). The speed of the new
means of transportation allowed hunters to outrun car-
ibou and polar bears, introducing new ways of hunting
and eliminating others. Former ways of communication
were affected, as the driver became physically separated
from occasional passengers on the sled and the noise of
the engine prevented people from talking (Bane 1982:
101). Travelling as a context for the transmission of geo-
graphic knowledge was severely affected by the intro-
duction of the snowmobile, a circumstance that likely
contributed to a loss of Inuit wayfinding knowledge
among younger or less experienced hunters today. At the
same time, travellers realized that dogs were more re-
liable on thin ice and during blizzards, when they could
frequently “smell their way home” (Smith 1972:2–3).
There is also the well-known argument in favor of dogs:
in extreme conditions where starvation is a risk, snow-
mobiles cannot be eaten.
Similar to the rifle, snowmobiles are now part of the
very identity of Inuit travellers,1 and they need to be
understood as part of social, political, and economic
change. Rasing has noted that “the appearance of skidoos
roughly coincided with the shift from camp to settle-
ment-life” (1994:165). The creation of towns and Cana-
dian government pressure for settlements (sedentariza-
tion) implied an increasing distance between people and
animals. Seasonal camps (following animal migration
patterns) were no longer the mainstay of Inuit life. The
snowmobile was, therefore, the ideal technology to solve
the conflicting realities of living in town and carrying
on with hunting and fishing in well-established loca-
tions. Both life in town and the acquisition and main-
tenance of the new transportation technologies (includ-
ing outboard motors) prompted Inuit to seek wage
employment. The snowmobile’s capability of travelling
great distances in short periods of time made possible
the emergence of “week-end and holiday hunters”
(Usher 1976:215; Collignon 1996:184). The use of the
1. The relative absence of the snowmobile in Inuit art is more the
effect of market preferences (which frequently favour the “tradi-
tional” pre-contact Inuit) than of real significance for the Inuit. As
important as dogs are as a symbol of Inuit culture, snowmobiles
have become so important a technology that life may be difficult
to imagine without them.
740 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
snowmobile was therefore closely tied with the new set-
ting of life: the town. Snowmobiles, in fact, became a
means of transportation “in and around the settlements
for short trips to the store, as dog-teams never were”
(Smith 1972:3). Within the new physical context of life
(the very design of the town), dogs became obsolete as a
technology because they “invariably get tangled around
poles, buildings, and people.” Even today, dogs are a bur-
den, as they can hardly be left loose and hunting for dog
food has become increasingly difficult because of time
constraints and people’s different interests. The snow-
mobile was a facilitator in the new cultural setting of
the Inuit.
We do not take from this a straightforward account of
the transmission of context and values through the in-
troduction of technologies.2 The introduction of the rifle
and the snowmobile did not result in disaster for Inuit
culture. On the contrary, analysing the increase in pro-
ductivity brought by rifles and whaling boats, Damas
remarked that “rather than being responsible for a grad-
ual abandonment of the hunting economy, culture con-
tact has made possible a new level of prosperity at Ig-
lulik” (1963:32). Wenzel also showed that for Inuit
harvesters the snowmobile “provides a mobility without
which, in the current demographic circumstances, they
could not sustain seal hunting” (1991:165). Both the rifle
and the snowmobile help Inuit adapt to particular cir-
cumstances. These new devices were introduced along
with new economic, political, and social dynamics and,
in turn, favoured the flourishing of those dynamics. They
did not result in acculturation, but their appropriation
involved a more or less conscious conformity to new
ways of life (e.g., trading and the town).
The ecology of technology seems to be getting more
complex and concealed over time. As dramatic a change
as the rifle was for the Inuit, its impacts were assessed,
its working mechanisms understood, and the commer-
cial context of new conditions grasped and dealt with.
Snowmobiles were thoroughly integrated into former so-
cial and economic practices, and Inuit became knowl-
edgeable about their mechanics and operation. The play
of economic relations generated by the snowmobile,
however, was more complex.3 Kemp (1971) and Wenzel
(1991) have shown how it was integrated into well-es-
tablished patterns of economic organization. It remains
true that this new technology would be unsustainable
without the existence of towns (a technology of settle-
ment brought by the Canadian government) and very
difficult to maintain without actually living in a town.
The snowmobile also became integrated into a new
wage-labour organization of time (weekend travel). As
with the automobile in other parts of the world, newer
models of snowmobiles have steadily become higher-per-
2. Pfaffenberger has shown that “it is extremely unlikely that a
transferred artifact will succeed in bringing with it the ideological
structure that produced it” (1992:510).
3. Pelto (1973:166) suggested that one of the most dramatic effects
of the introduction of the snowmobile among the herders of Lapland
would be “de-localization,” growing dependence on outside sources
of energy.
forming, more pervasive, more reliable, and safer in some
respects at the same time as their inner workings have
come to depend on increasingly obscure and specialized
electronic and other components that cannot be repaired
on the spot.4
These ecological relationships among devices make it
difficult to understand the significance of any one device,
and such separate analysis contributes to a potential mis-
reading and underdetermination of systemic patterns.
GPS technology represents an even more complex case:
its working principles are only slightly understood, the
geographic principles upon which it operates are vaguely
known, and its mechanism is impossible to repair lo-
cally. In the next section we explore a paradigmatic the-
ory of technology that may contribute to an understand-
ing of the systemic qualities of contemporary
technology.
The Device Paradigm
Although the work of Albert Borgmann (1999, 1992,
1984) has been celebrated as one of the few comprehen-
sive, prescriptive theories of technology (Higgs, Light,
and Strong 2000), his work has remained largely un-
known to anthropologists and his hypotheses have rarely
benefited from interaction with ethnographic research.
Borgmann’s philosophy describes the patterns that
emerge from our interactions with contemporary tech-
nologies as part of what he calls “the device paradigm.”
His crucial insight comes from the bold proposition that
contemporary technologies have become a characteristic
way of “taking up with the world” (1984:35) through
which the backgrounds and contexts of devices are be-
coming increasingly concealed and separated from the
daily experience of life. This results in a deterioration of
engagement with the surrounding social and physical
environments. Borgmann argues that this pattern is re-
sponsible for the social shape that the world has taken
over the past three centuries and that was first articu-
lated in the Enlightenment through the works of Bacon
and Descartes, who postulated that reason was to “ex-
ercise its power in part by wresting from nature its se-
crets through scientific investigation” (pp. 35–36). Ac-
cording to Borgmann, “in the technological mode of
taking up with the world there is a promise that this
approach to reality will, by way of domination of nature,
yield liberation and enrichment” (p. 41). This promise
both guides and veils the construction of the modern
world, and it has become the prevailing paradigm of con-
temporary life. Borgmann follows Kuhn’s idea of a par-
adigm as a set of beliefs that congeal and conform to a
discernible pattern. A pattern or paradigm always pro-
duces an ambivalent political and social response. Pat-
4. In Nunavut communities, the situation is particularly difficult
because of their remote geographic location. This newer type of
machine requires more specialized maintenance. In Igloolik, it is
common to see hunters unable to go out on the land for weeks
because they are waiting for a part to arrive via a globalized supply
chain.

terns are typically overwhelming because they represent
a broad and powerful set of beliefs, but at the same time
all kinds of exceptions are allowed. Therefore to assert
that technology constitutes a dominant pattern is to as-
sert both the great importance of that pattern and the
fact that it can be and is being subverted. At the heart
of Borgmann’s theory is an epistemic commitment to
three kinds of knowledge: scientific, testimonial, and
paradigmatic. He argues that scientific knowledge (de-
ductive and inductive reasoning) has transcended the
other two. Testimonial knowledge—the knowledge that
typically moves us to act—is pushed to the margins, and
the knowledge of patterns has become increasingly elu-
sive. We are therefore less well equipped to understand
the character and implications of patterns at the very
time that we need such insights the most.
Borgmann differentiates “focal things” and “devices.”
Focal things and practices are inseparable from their con-
text. “The experience of a thing is always and also a
bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world” (p.
41). A wood-burning stove, for instance, furnishes more
than mere warmth (pp. 41–42):
It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the
work and leisure of a family and gave the house a
center. Its coldness marked the morning and the
spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It
assigned to the different family members tasks that
defined their place in the household. . . . It provided
for the entire family a regular and bodily engage-
ment with the rhythm of the seasons.
In other words, a stove was a type of technology that
allowed full engagement with the world, and through
the skills developed in the relationship with the thing
social engagement was also favoured. This relation with
the thing was not always pleasant and in some cases
might mean discomfort, but that discomfort was part of
the engagement with the rhythms of nature and the cy-
cles of life.
In Borgmann’s view, as we have seen, the promise of
technology consists in liberating us from such toil; in
the process, however, the means are increasingly sepa-
rated from the ends, and full engagement with the world
becomes compromised. In contrast to the traditional
stove, central heating is seen by Borgmann as a “device.”
Central heating has undoubtedly increased the comfort
of a household, liberating people from daily burdens, but
it has done much more (p. 42):
A device such as a central heating plant procures
mere warmth and disburdens us of all other ele-
ments. These are taken over by the machinery of
the device. The machinery makes no demands on
our skill, strength, or attention, and it is less de-
manding the less it makes its presence felt. In the
progress of technology, the machinery of a device
has therefore a tendency to become concealed or to
shrink.
What is present and visible, however, is what the device
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 741
provides: a commodity. For Borgmann, the commodity
is “what the device is there for.” For instance, the com-
modity provided by central heating is “warmth,” by a
television “entertainment,” by a snowmobile “transpor-
tation,” and by a telephone “communication.” Borg-
mann defines commodity as “a commodious way in
which devices make goods and services available.”
The central point about devices is that they offer a
mere commodity that is separate from the machinery.
The tendency in this paradigm is for commodities to
become more and more available as the machinery be-
comes more and more concealed. The issue of avail-
ability is an important one. Borgmann points out that
something is available “if it has been rendered instan-
taneous, ubiquitous, safe and easy” (p. 41). The central
heating power plant, for example, is part of the machin-
ery that provides warmth (the commodity). Such warmth
is given to us instantaneously and, through the use of a
thermostat, can be easily controlled. Warmth is ubiq-
uitous in both a spatial and a temporal sense, as it is
evenly distributed within the house and maintained by
automatically compensating for variations in outside
temperature. With the replacement of the stove, Borg-
mann would argue, a significant set of human experi-
ences with the environment and with others (through
the development of skills) has been seriously affected.
There is a distinctive and constraining pattern that
describes what has become a pervasive deterioration of
engagement as the complicated and delicate social re-
lations that centre on things are reduced to machinery
and commodities. In an all-in-one coffee machine, for
instance, at the mere press of a button coffee beans are
ground, a precise portion is deposited into a receptacle,
steam is injected through the beans, and a portion of
coffee results automatically. A cup of coffee is the com-
modity that results from this increasingly hidden process
or machinery. The consumer is liberated from the skills
and labour involved in producing a good cup of coffee,
and in some respects the automatic coffee maker might
produce at least a reliably good cup of coffee. The pattern
of social relations has shifted, and the concepts of tra-
dition, continuity, resourcefulness, and skill are subor-
dinated to the smooth operation of an alluring device.
Borgmann calls this reduction of things to devices the
“device paradigm” to highlight its archetypical charac-
ter, but it is not restricted to devices per se. The systems
of contemporary life, including belief systems and the
way we relate to time, travel, friendship, love, and iden-
tity, are shifting in favour of an increasing emphasis on
commodities, the recession of machinery, and the dim-
inution of authentic forms of engagement. The promise
of technology to reduce labour, increase capacity, and
concentrate power (literally and figuratively) is appar-
ently boundless, and its allure has so far outpaced con-
cerns about the loss of engagement. Problems with de-
vices are attributed not to the extrinsic character of
social patterns but to the intrinsic capability of those
devices and systems: computer interconnectivity will be
seamless and simple once everyone is attached to wire-
less networks; cars will offer the same power with neg-
742 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
ligible pollution with the next generation of drive-train
technology; photography will be transformed by high-
resolution digital devices; social justice will increase
with the availability of seamless electronic communi-
cations. The promise is undeniable, but it belies the
transformations that take place in the surrounding social
relationships. We are taken in by the promise of better
and smoother devices without stopping to assess the con-
sequences for social relationships and connections to the
landscape.
Several aspects of Borgmann’s theory have been the
focus of recent debate (Higgs, Light, and Strong 2000).
One of the main objections to it is the possibility that
technological devices (e.g., the electronic coffee maker
described above) can still become part of meaningful and
engaging practices. In other words, the sharp distinction
between focal things and devices is debatable when con-
sidering specific examples. For instance, it could be ar-
gued that a stereo can be an aesthetically and socially
engaging thing for a particular group of people. Borgmann
has also been accused of romanticizing a pre-technolog-
ical world. We believe that some of the problems with
his theory come from his highly partial and subjective
choice of examples and his excessively romanticized de-
scription of the particular world of his choosing. He
seems to favour a simpler time when devices were less
distracting and pervasive. However, it is clear that he is
neither determinist or prelapsarian in his views. In ad-
vocating a patterned view of technology he exposes op-
portunities for resistance, subversion, and transforma-
tion of the dominant patterns, which in effect means
focus on things that matter deeply (e.g., preparing food
in a convivial setting, playing rather than always listen-
ing to music). There is much to admire in the designs
and contrivances of contemporary devices as long as we
apprehend these in a way that does not inure us to the
device paradigm. For instance, for Inuit hunters Borg-
mann would counsel that GPS technology is well de-
ployed as an adjunct to Inuit navigation instead of as the
central or dominant device for wayfinding.
Borgmann’s main contribution consists in clearly de-
scribing and unveiling the existence of a pattern through
which machinery and commodities (means and ends;
things and contexts) are becoming increasingly sepa-
rated, as well as in identifying and calling into question
the promise of technology. Meaningful practices are still
possible in this new context, but what seems undeniable
is the increasing separation of means and ends through
the growing concealment of the machinery and the ever-
increasing availability of means. The unveiling of this
pattern, we believe, is crucial for an understanding of
technology not only in a theoretical sense but also in
our daily dealings with devices. In proposing the appli-
cation of Borgmann’s theory to modern technology we
are not advocating a return to a pre-technological world.
Instead, we believe that it permits us to have a better
grasp of the way technologies evolve and the way phys-
ical and social engagement can be maintained and
protected.
In the anthropological literature, Ingold has reached a
similar conclusion, stating that “the goal of modern
technology has been to override the constraints of the
natural world, to bring its forces under control so that
the rhythms of society can be brought into conformity
with an imposed, artificially contrived schedule” (2000:
326). Ingold also considers technical evolution as a pro-
cess not of complexification but of objectivation (p. 320),
which means that a central heating plant, for example,
should be considered not a technical refinement of the
wood-burning stove but a different technology that dis-
poses us to a separation of people from nature. In the
same line, Escobar’s (1994:214) concept of cyberculture
refers to the commoditization of life, since “we increas-
ingly live and make ourselves in techno-biocultural en-
vironments structured by novel forms of science and
technology.”
The Patterns of Global Positioning Systems
Navigation and wayfinding are activities that require a
high degree of engagement with the physical environ-
ment (including the sky) and with weather conditions.
Ingold (2000:220) has defined wayfinding “as a skilled
performance in which the traveler, whose powers of per-
ception and action have been fine-tuned through previ-
ous experience, ‘feels his way’ towards his goal, contin-
ually adjusting his movements in response to an ongoing
perceptual monitoring of his surroundings.” In this
sense, the very activities of finding the way and orienting
oneself involve engaging in a series of relationships with
the territory and the surroundings in which one is
travelling.
To help travellers establish their positions relative to
more or less familiar environments, several technologies
have been created and used by different cultures and in
different settings. Micronesian navigators, for instance,
use “moving islands” to monitor distance travelled
(Hutchins 1995:183), and we have seen how Inuit use
snowdrifts shaped by prevailing winds. Among the in-
struments that became regular paraphernalia of Euro-
pean navigation in the nineteenth century were geo-
graphic charts and maps, the magnetic compass, pilot
books, the sextant, and the clock. These instruments
help navigators deal with spatial decisions and environ-
mental conditions such as poor visibility, and all of them
require comprehensive understanding of one’s surround-
ings. Maps need to be related to observations of land-
marks on the horizon; making a sextant reading will also
involve establishing a series of relations with the horizon
and the sky.
Hutchins has observed that “a way of thinking comes
with these navigational techniques and tools. The ad-
vances that were made in navigation were always parts
of a surrounding culture . . . a passion for measuring and
a penchant for taking the representation more seriously
than the thing represented” (1995:115). Such ways of
thinking relate to broader economic and political factors.
For instance, the search for a precise and efficient way
of determining longitude became a crucial political mat-

ter that was tied to the need to reduce accidents and
economic loss in times of increasing commerce (Sobel
(1995). As centuries-old seafaring knowledge was grad-
ually displaced by navigational technologies, the rise of
the device paradigm was evident in this case as early as
the nineteenth century. Commerce and trade demanded
efficient, reliable means of moving goods and people un-
der virtually any conditions.
The combination of newer navigational instruments
(e.g., radar, automatic beacons, computational support)
produces an increase in efficiency and a corresponding
loss of skill. According to Hutchins, “in modern navi-
gation, with a complexity of instruments and tech-
niques, the computational abilities of the mind of the
navigator penetrate only the shallows of the computa-
tional problems of navigation. In the day-to-day practice
of navigation, the deeper problems are either transformed
by some representational artifice into shallow ones or
not addressed at all” (1995:174). This phenomenon is
important because skill, according to Borgmann, is at the
heart of social and environmental engagement (1984:42);
see also Ingold (2000:353).
Hutchins’s observation reveals the operation of the de-
vice paradigm in modern navigation, and it is clearly
observable in GPS technology. The promise of technol-
ogy is to liberate us from toil and misery through the
subordination of nature, and the developments that con-
verged in the creation of the GPS were driven by the
quest for precision that underlies that promise. In his
keynote address to an international conference on the
subject in 1992, Ronald Abler5 described the combined
use of computer-based geographic information system
(GIS) and GPS technology as a response to “the need to
fix the position of things in terrestrial space that has
animated the work of geographers from the origins of the
discipline” (1993:133). In this sense, he calls the com-
bined used of GPS and GIS “the fulfilment of the ge-
ographer’s dream.” But what if in that perfect represen-
tation of the world boundaries between the map and the
territory become blurred and something important about
the human experience of space becomes lost? Do some
technologies encourage disengagement from experience
of the land, people, and culture? Following Abler’s re-
marks, it would seem that these new geographic tech-
nologies may have the potential to transform local ge-
ographies into standardized and measurable space (see
also Sahay’s [1998] study of the introduction of GIS tech-
nology in India) and in so doing to suppress or diminish
the spatial and wayfinding skills of local peoples.
Beyond the power of GPS technology as a navigational
and surveying instrument, its convergence with other
technologies opens up myriad possibilities. Integrated
with sonar technologies, for instance, it can provide in-
formation about underwater conditions, including the
precise location of shallow areas and schools of fish. In
several cultures the ability to find fish was the type of
knowledge usually transmitted from generation to gen-
5. Abler was at the time the executive director of the Association
of American Geographers.
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 743
eration and the result of comprehensive observation of
complex environmental features and conditions (see
Pálsson 1990 and Smith 1996). Fish finding has become
a commodity separated to a significant extent from the
complex machinery that makes it possible.
GPS technology is, in many ways, the perfect Borg-
mannian device. First, it creates the possibility of ori-
entation that depends entirely on the device’s ability to
portray position and movement and indicate direction of
travel. Engagement with local conditions becomes in-
creasingly unnecessary. The GPS receiver’s answer to a
spatial question (e.g., where to go) is provided by a mech-
anism that is physically detached from it (a network of
satellites) and requires no involvement of the traveller
with the environment. Although the act of physical
travel will always involve some connection with the sur-
roundings, this connection is—to use Hutchins’s term—
shallow.
Second, it is easy. Learning Inuit wayfinding tech-
niques requires years of practice, and key lessons are
sometimes learned “the hard way” by trial and error.
Elders who were born on the land remember that when
they were children they were brought out of bed every
morning and told to go out and report on the wind and
sky conditions (Amarualik 1994). This activity, which
was known as anijaaq, involved the learning of skills
through a process that was not necessarily pleasant. In
contrast, to learn the basic working principles of the GPS
receiver may take a day of practice, and to be able to use
most of its functions comfortably may take a week or
two. Furthermore, the user does not need to understand
the machinery of its navigational answer, which is given
as a commodity.6
Third, it can be used anywhere and anytime. It is in-
dependent of local weather conditions. Fog, for instance,
which is regarded as the main obstacle for wayfinding,
represents no problem for a GPS user.7 In contrast to Inuit
wayfinding knowledge, which is closely tied to regional
conditions and local geography, it can be as useful in
Igloolik as in the South Pacific, on the streets of Mon-
treal, or in the Argentine pampas.
Fourth, its response to a spatial question is instanta-
neous. Instead of processing local information to estab-
lish relative position and speed and direction of travel,
the GPS user profits from a concealed mechanism that
processes data and delivers the answer within a few sec-
onds. One of the most basic questions in navigation
(Where am I?) is instantaneously answered by a complex
network of several technologies that we do not see.
6. Using Inuit methods, the bases of a navigational answer (e.g.,
“This is the direction of travel”) are always known, as they are
related to the understanding of the interaction of several factors
(e.g., wind patterns, snow conditions, and star trajectories).
7. Navigating by GPS in fog implies placing full trust in the in-
strument. We need to follow the receiver’s directions regardless of
our own feelings of what the right direction might be. The allure
of the instrument is that it is always right. The problem with this,
of course, is described by Alianakuluk’s story (above) of how local
knowledge of pressure ridges led to a departure from the GPS’s dead-
straight path.
744 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
Finally, it provides safety or at least the sense of being
safe. Newcomers are able to go where they would have
never dared to go before, especially without the company
of an experienced traveller. Newly arrived schoolteach-
ers and government workers are now seen going caribou
hunting and fishing on their own, without the formerly
indispensable aid of local guides.
As we have seen, Inuit wayfinding methods are diffi-
cult to learn and embedded in a locality. Finding the way
through snowdrifts involves an understanding of several
environmental factors. Whereas the use of such navi-
gational instruments as the sextant, the magnetic com-
pass, and the astrolabe requires a comprehensive under-
standing of the land and the sky, even if this knowledge
is mediated by reliance on these devices, GPS technology
extends the mediation to the geographer’s dream: en-
gagement is optional.
GPS technology is better understood if considered as
an instantiation and exemplar of the device paradigm
which is already present in various aspects of Igloolik
life. It is being used in creative ways alongside other Inuit
methods and sometimes replacing previous ones for deal-
ing with circumstances that have themselves been cre-
ated by this paradigm: the need to hunt on weekends
regardless of weather conditions because of work and
school obligations, the lack of detailed knowledge of the
surroundings due to fast transportation and less time on
the land, and the need to rationalize gasoline use. It is
a technological solution to problems that have been cre-
ated by the commoditization of life. These interrela-
tionships form what we have called an ecology of tech-
nology, and the underlying pattern is that of the device.
Arguably, the technology can help less experienced
travellers to keep up with hunting and other significant
long-established local activities with less risk of becom-
ing lost. Furthermore, to say that a GPS user is less en-
gaged with the environment than one who uses the
winds, etc., is an oversimplification. A GPS waypoint
can still represent a significant place for a traveller in-
volved in the engaging activity of travelling and orient-
ing. However, as the elders’ concerns imply, GPS tech-
nology can provide the conditions for disengagement
because it provides answers to spatial questions whose
processing was in itself an environmentally engaging ex-
perience. How important that loss is—how fundamental
to the Inuit experience of the environment—is an as-
sessment that we do not presume to make. But the par-
ticular case of GPS use in Igloolik leads us to more
general reflection on humans’ relationship with new
technologies.
Such technologies as television, the Internet, and cen-
tral heating have made our lives more comfortable and
in many cases more enjoyable. They have also created,
with other devices, a new ecology for the development
of our lives. In this context, asking what is being lost
when a new technology is introduced is not only perti-
nent but also urgent in a time of rapid change. Borg-
mann’s theory of the device paradigm is illuminating in
that it establishes connections among various techno-
logical phenomena, concluding that contemporary tech-
nology has become a primary way of taking up with the
world in which engagement with the environment (and
with others) is diminished.
To date there have been no systematic attempts to
bring Borgmann’s theory to anthropological analyses of
technology, nor has there been a major connection be-
tween the two subfields of anthropology and philosophy
of technology. We believe that such interaction can be
mutually enriching and shed light on situations that we
cannot yet understand. In spite of the increased attention
to technology in anthropology and other human sci-
ences, the level of discriminating interpretation and
analysis has not kept pace with the rise of technology.
Comprehending the consequences of technology and ar-
riving at salutary approaches to engagement, adaptation,
and adjustment are among the signal challenges we face.
Conclusion
Using Borgmann’s theory to illuminate our ethnographic
work leads us to assert that global positioning systems
should be understood within an ecology of fast-changing,
integrated, and converging technologies created by and,
in turn, creating the pattern in which much of contem-
porary life takes place. One of the main characteristics
of this paradigm (and of modern technologies) is that
background and foreground become detached from one
another in the experience of the consumer: the com-
modity becomes preeminent as the machinery recedes
into the background. GPS technology is a particularly
clear example of this detachment: it gains independence
in the hand of the user as the background practically
disappears. The user’s ability to adapt the instrument is
undeniable, as is the latitude of choice (Lemonnier 1993)
offered by its encyclopaedic spatial capacity. For the first
time in history the navigator can completely rely on
technology and travel successfully knowing nothing
about navigation and very little about the environment.
One’s orientation becomes a commodity generated by a
complex machinery, and engaging with the environment
becomes a matter of choice. A feature of the device par-
adigm that we have not discussed is that the opening of
such choice usually results in further consumption, not
engagement (i.e., the allure of technology in reducing
labour and freeing us for leisure has typically resulted in
more rather than less consumption).
A limitation of many accounts of technology is that
they tend to hover close to a determinism that limits
choice and liberatory possibilities. A deterministic ac-
count of GPS technology would hold that it is bound to
erode the capacity for engagement with the land cher-
ished over the centuries by Inuit hunters. At the other
extreme are neutral accounts that argue with endless
optimism that technological ingenuity and human ad-
aptation will result in a positive future. Both accounts
are persuasive among those who have tended not to look
at technology from an ecological or relational perspec-
tive. From such a perspective, in contrast, there is a con-

straining pattern, but this pattern can be resisted in
countless local acts.
This was evident in our observations of GPS use in
the Igloolik region. Some inexperienced hunters and
travellers who depended heavily on the technology suf-
fered from the fallibility of all sophisticated technology
in unforgiving environments—batteries fail, ephemeral
features change, readings are misread, and the straightest
line turns out not always to be the best line. Knowledge
of the land- and seascape remained a crucial survival
skill. More important perhaps are the profound cultural
relationships that form from such engagement with peo-
ple and the land. More experienced hunters were able to
make selective use of GPS technology to assist naviga-
tion under certain circumstances. Hence, the damage to
cultural integrity is exaggerated as it proved to be in the
case of other incursions (e.g., the snowmobile). Some
conservative hunters who were raised on the land have
very little interest in the technology and maintain a firm
hold on Inuit wayfinding methods. Most interesting to
us was its use as an educational device that rekindled
an interest among young people in Inuit navigation. The
ultimate reliability of intimate landscape knowledge and
all that it holds for the continuity of cultural beliefs
remains an inspiration. Thus, the choice of engagement
over commodity remains a possibility no matter how
pervasive the device paradigm becomes.
The challenge of choosing and nurturing engagement
does become more difficult as the device paradigm in-
tensifies. As more people centre their wayfinding prac-
tices on GPS technology, the reference point for navi-
gation becomes the device. Some devices are more
alluring than others, and in our view this is one of the
more imposing ones. To choose Inuit wayfinding be-
comes increasingly heroic in the face of wayfinding that
depends on an advanced technological system. At the
present time, GPS technology is being integrated into a
series of other technologies (fish-finders, cars, cellular
phones, laptops) and may become a key element in the
development of robotics. It is not unrealistic to suppose
that it will at some point become so integrated into a
larger ecology of technologies that its presence will be
hardly noticed. Other devices amplify the significance of
GPS use. The snowmobile creates the need for rapid and
more responsive navigation. Use of computer technology
builds comfort with electronic devices. Punching the
keypad on a phone or any other portable device becomes
a heuristic practice for GPS use. Together, these inter-
secting devices create a mutually reinforcing pattern.
Again, resistance is more difficult, but choice to do
things differently remains open.
An ecological view of technology coupled with the
device paradigm produces a worrisome portrait of the
power of devices to separate people, in this case Inuit
hunters, from engagement with focal experiences. We
should be concerned about the effects of GPS technology
partly because the theory of the device paradigm suggests
so and more specifically because members of the Igloolik
community have raised warnings about the conse-
quences of losing Inuit wayfinding knowledge. Identi-
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 745
fying the pattern is the first step to reform. No matter
how fragile the knowledge or practices, it is possible to
rebuild a supportive social setting. It may be necessary
to emphasize Inuit wayfinding in the school system, con-
tinue the GPS training programs that emphasize the
value of Inuit wayfinding, create awareness of Inuit way-
finding among search-and-rescue personnel, and hold
firmly in mind that Inuit wayfinding for Inuit hunters
is about choosing to do something that matters deeply
to one’s identity. These are not easy tasks, but forestall-
ing a substantive loss of engagement will require them.
In understanding that a distinctive and widespread pat-
tern—the device paradigm—operates to destroy engage-
ment and that what is needed is a locally explicit notion
of engagement, we are brought closer to asking situated,
challenging, and beneficial questions of specific devices
as well as the more general question of how we are cop-
ing with change.
The revolution brought about by GPS technology in
navigation of course goes much beyond the concrete case
of the Inuit in Igloolik. It has in fact become a topic of
discussion among sailors as traditional navigational
practices have become obsolete. The authors of a web-
based course on celestial navigation (http://www.
celestialnavigation.net) ask the rhetorical question
“Why is celestial navigation still valuable in the context
of GPS navigation?” The answer to that question will,
of course, justify the existence of the course. Of the rea-
sons given (understanding navigation, emergency and
backup, tradition, fun, perspective on life, beauty), only
one is practical (emergency and backup), all the others
being traditional or aesthetic. Regarding beauty the au-
thors say: “There is tremendous satisfaction in being able
to truly place ourselves in the celestial coordinate sys-
tem . . . our own little horizon/zenith moving and chang-
ing in the interlocking wheels of the celestial coordi-
nates.” Elsewhere Glennon (2000), an experienced sailor,
touches on the GPS-versus-traditional-navigation de-
bate. He praises GPS technology but at the same time
advocates celestial-navigation learning. His reason is ex-
istential: “gratification that comes from experiencing the
delightful amalgamation of the traditional craftsmanship
of taking a sextant sight and common sense.” Some may
dismiss these invitations as mere romanticism, but we
believe that they have a deeper meaning: there is a sense
of fulfillment and accomplishment in being able to relate
fully to the activity we perform and to the environment
in which we are. GPS technology takes that experience
away, as the response is provided by a mechanism that
is hidden, unreachable, and, to most users, incompre-
hensible. In the end, if we value the continuity, integrity,
and even evolution of cultural beliefs, whether among
Inuit hunters, sailors, or ourselves, vigilance and fidelity
to engagement is essential. Engagement cannot finally
be replaced by a commodity.
In advancing a paradigmatic view of technology we
realize that a disciplinary tension separating anthropol-
ogy and philosophy is exposed. Philosophers are con-
cerned primarily with explanation and theory, an-
thropologists with interpretation and description.
746 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
Furthermore, ethnographic research reminds us con-
stantly of societies’ capacity to deal with change and the
fact that exceptions to the rule are almost always found.
Anthropologists have given different names to this phe-
nomenon. Appadurai (1996:7), for instance, has identified
these processes as “resistance, irony, selectivity, and, in
general, agency,” Lemonnier (1993) as technological
choices, Schaniel (1988) as appropriation of technologies,
and Pfaffenberger (1992) as technological adjustments
and reconstitutions. Such a tension has been present all
along in the writing of this paper, as one of us (Higgs, an
anthropologically minded philosopher) has a stronger
background in philosophy than the other (Aporta, a phil-
osophically minded anthropologist). We are convinced,
however, that such fundamental exploration needs to be
undertaken and such generalization risked. This is not
a merely theoretical enterprise. Technology has already
become the setting in which much of our daily lives
takes place, and in locations physically remote from the
hubs of technological production, such as Igloolik, the
culture of technology is becoming more prominent. Borg-
mann’s theory of the device paradigm is a comprehensive
attempt to describe a general pattern that is helpful in
identifying where potential practices and devices
threaten cherished ways of life. His theory is not without
difficulties (see Higgs, Light, and Strong (2000) and will
certainly be enriched by critical inspection by anthro-
pologists, economists, and sociologists. However, we be-
lieve that his fundamental premise is right: if life is lived
through devices, finding meaning (personal, social, and
environmental) becomes more difficult and engaging
with our social and physical surroundings becomes less
obvious and appropriate.
Comments
david hakken
School of Informatics, Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN 47401, U.S.A. (dhakken@indiana.
edu). 19 vii 05
As an anthropologist who has long advocated attention
to contemporary technology, I welcome this contribu-
tion. Others are in a better position to discuss its regional
dimensions; my comments will focus on its interven-
tion, via theoretically informed ethnographic example,
into the general problem of a cultural anthropology of
technology. I am mostly interested in the authors’ view
that Borgmann’s “device paradigm” is a good starting
point for analysis. I take these issues up as one who has
for a long time appreciated the relevance of philosophy
of technology to current anthropology. (Indeed, there are
more of us than Aporta and Higgs indicate, although we
may be more active in the Society for Social Studies of
Science than the American Anthropological Associa-
tion.) More particularly, I have for some time appreciated
Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology for its
strong attention to cultural diversity.
At a general level, Aporta and Higgs address the need
for an understanding of what happens when “anthro-
pological” peoples encounter contemporary technolo-
gies. Such an understanding must avoid two traps. One
is localist analysis that romanticizes “tradition” and
thereby glamorizes all rejection and resistance, while the
other is the globalist opposite, seeing only displacement
and acculturation. What the cultural anthropology of
contemporary culture needs, in contrast, is situated “glo-
calism”—the ability to appreciate both what is unique
(and tends to have uniquely powerful impacts on social
formation reproduction) about contemporary technolog-
ical systems and the relative robust means available to
existing social formations, if given enough time and
space, for coping with the onslaught. Aporta and Higgs
consider Borgmann’s device paradigm and the broader
ecological approach to technology of which it is an ex-
emplar a core element of such a perspective. In a word,
current technologies tend to “alienate” their users more
profoundly from their contexts than have previous tech-
nologies and thus ratchet up the stakes of adoption. The
point is similar to the distinction Marx made between
manufacture and machinofacture. In the former, workers
use new tools but the tools remain essentially extensions
of the worker (a power saw as opposed to a handsaw); in
the latter, the worker becomes an extension of the ma-
chine.
Aporta and Higgs show how this perspective illumi-
nates the differences between older (firearms) and newer
(snowmobile and global positioning systems) technolog-
ical artifacts with regard to their integration into Inuit
social formations. They do a particularly good job of
stressing that the cultural correlates of any technological
adoption depend substantially on other social dynamics,
such as the adoption of wage labor and movement to
permanent living quarters, that are not necessitated by
the new technologies although they may well afford and
be afforded by them.
One lesson we can learn from Aporta and Higgs’s cases
is the need for deliberate pace and substantial discursive
space when thinking about adopting contemporary tech-
nologies. An equally applicable obverse lesson emerges
from my current research on automated information and
communication technologies in southern Southeast
Asia. Here widespread promotion of these technologies
in the hope of vaulting into a promised “Knowledge So-
ciety” (in Malaysia, by 2020) has not been accompanied
by sufficient attention regarding how the one is to lead
to the other. The discursive space must include a more
deliberate, “positive” discussion about all of the policies
necessary to bring about the desired correlates of tech-
nology adoption, as well as the research needed to mon-
itor impacts and implications. Equally important are
mechanisms to insure that those affected are substan-
tially present in such discourses and in the consumption
of the monitoring information produced. Here the an-
thropology of technology has much to learn from the

participatory-design and public-science movements, es-
pecially in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe.
As Aporta and Higgs show, an analytically sophisti-
cated cultural anthropology of technology can justify an
important place for culture at the technology table. This
experience provides an important caution to those cur-
rently enamoured with “flat-earth,” totalizing perspec-
tives on globalization. My examples are intended to sug-
gest a complementary point—that what happens when
social formations already mediated by employment re-
lations come to terms with “device” technologies has
much to suggest about the likely experiences of classi-
cally “anthropological” peoples. In short, what we need
to cultivate is a comparative anthropology of technology,
one giving appropriate attention to all types of social
formations in all the world’s cultural traditions. Aporta
and Higgs contribute an important element to that
broader project.
lisa palmer
School of Anthropology, Geography, and
Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia (lrpalmer@
unimelb.edu.au). 18 vii 05
Aporta and Higgs offer important empirical research on
engagement, adaptation, and adjustment in relation to
new technologies and build on this by beginning to de-
velop a cogent theoretical contribution to an anthropol-
ogy of technology. Commenting generally on human in-
teractions with technology, they propose that Borg-
mann’s theory of the device paradigm can be used to
assess the level of diminished engagement between peo-
ple and their environment (and others) as a result of new
technologies. In the context of the case study they de-
velop important questions: When is loss of engagement
crucial? How are adoption and rejection of new devices
negotiated? What are the moral and material conse-
quences of new technology? They argue that we need to
look at technology from an ecological or relational per-
spective attentive to the ways in which the pattern set
by the device paradigm is also “resisted in countless local
acts.”
I would suggest, however, that the device paradigm
theory would benefit from more attention to the politics
of engagement in relation to technology and the envi-
ronment. Anthropologists such as Tim Ingold have ap-
plied a phenomenological approach to understanding the
environment and encouraged others to attend to the in-
teractive contexts through which people both know the
land and identify with it. However, attention to the pro-
cesses of engagement between people and place needs to
be complemented by close attention to the politics at
work in these processes. It requires clear recognition that
the everyday practices of human-human-nonhuman re-
lations are powerfully political, a “property of social
life,” to borrow from Appadurai. The social and political
implications of the device paradigm theory require an
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 747
analysis which refuses to reify either devices or people’s
engagement with the environment.
One of Aporta and Higgs’s main points is that tech-
nologies cannot be analyzed outside of their contexts of
production, exchange, and use. Yet while the process of
device commodification removes the specific attention
paid to social and political contexts, devices often enlarge
the possibility and realization of differently constituted
engagements with the environment and with others for
particular individuals or groups, often at the expense of
the socially and historically situated engagements of oth-
ers. This is particularly the case in the context of mi-
nority indigenous peoples in postcolonial states, where
the use of and access to new technologies, the production
and use of the “natural” environment, and even the
terms of engagement are fraught with the legacy of un-
equal colonial relations. For example, in the case study
provided, how will the use of GPS technology as a tool
for navigating the landscape influence not only the style
of Inuit’s engagement with the environment and with
each other but also the relationship between non-Inuit
visitors and the Inuit hosts on whom they have previ-
ously relied for wayfinding assistance? While the authors
address these issues to some extent, exploration of the
politics of engagement would lead one to focus less on
the notion of diminished engagement and more on the
material and discursive realities of changing social and
physical relationships.
m a r k p a l m e r a n d ro b e r t ru n d s t ro m
Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma,
Norman, OK 73019, U.S.A. (rrundstrom@ou.edu). 21
vii 05
Aporta and Higgs’s general direction coincides with ear-
lier work in geography, and their ethnographic infor-
mation rings true with the experience of one of us in
another Inuit village, Arviat. We were dismayed, though,
to see the dreams of Ron Abler taken for the dreams of
all geographers. Many geographers find Abler’s version
of a “perfect geographic world” ethnocentric, unjust, and
dystopic, and most firmly believe that environmental
engagement is not optional. Journals like Cultural Ge-
ographies and Progress in Human Geography lead in
publishing inquiries into the character of human spatial
experience since the development of geographic infor-
mation science (GIS).
Do some technologies have the potential to transform
local geographies into standardized and measurable
space and in so doing suppress or diminish the spatial
and wayfinding skills of local peoples? Is there an urgent
need to study what is lost when electronic technologies
are introduced? Yes, but ten years ago GIS was already
defined as “a set of tools, technologies, approaches, and
ideas that are vitally embedded in broader transforma-
tions of science, society, and culture” (Pickles 1995:4),
and a substantial body of literature on the social impact
of these technologies has already accumulated (see, e.g.,
Curry 1998; Monmonier 2002; Pickles 1995; Schuurman
748 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
(1999, 2000). There is even a ten-year-old study theoriz-
ing the social impact of GIS on indigenous peoples
(Rundstrom 1995). While, to our knowledge, none of this
literature cites Borgmann’s work, the features of his “de-
vice paradigm” elaborated here—deskilling, commodi-
fication, intimacy reduction, uncontrolled representa-
tions, important concealments and intrusions, etc.—are
already available in the sources noted above and else-
where (e.g., Harvey 1990). Consequently, we wonder if
introducing this concept now is necessary or useful.
It is surprising to note the absence of Latour’s (1981,
1987) actor-networks and centers of calculation, Ihde’s
(1990, 2002) explanations of the relationships between
the body, earth, and technology, Habermas’s (1987)
claims about what happens when the system-world en-
croaches on the life-world, or even Foucault’s panopti-
con, and Connerton’s (1989) characterization of inscrip-
tive and incorporative societies seems particularly
apropos. These sources are rich and should at least be
considered and evaluated.
In addition, we remain dubious about the value of in-
voking apparent similarities with rifles, snowmobiles,
woodstoves, and coffeemakers. A GPS receiver is defi-
nitely not a stand-alone technology. Whereas the other
artifacts depend on bullets, gas, an axe, and electricity,
respectively, GPS is more complex internally, simpler
externally, yet also more concealed. It is an integrated
“attached” technology, a “rhizome” in a vast network
of innumerable, replaceable nodes that can be developed
or rendered useless and linked or delinked quickly any-
where, anytime (Deleuze and Guattari 1987).
Also, GPS is an intrusive surveillance technology, and
once embedded in cell phones, fish finders, or vehicles
it can transmit data, not just receive it, via the same 24
orbiting satellites to which Aporta and Higgs briefly re-
fer. They speculate that GPS will become integrated into
a larger ecology of technologies so that its presence will
be hardly noticed, but this scenario is no longer in the
future. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission
has ordered that by 2005 95% of all cell phones sold in
the United States be location-tracking devices. General
Motors’s OnStar automobile navigation system has been
a middle-class reality for several years. Perhaps more to
the point, the Canadian government is promoting “sat-
ellite/cellular help systems” across the country through
its National Search and Rescue Secretariat (SAR); it
wants GPS installed in cars, ATVs, motorboats, and
snowmobiles for SAR operations. In sum, this rhizo-
matic embeddedness already exists, allowing place-ra-
tionalization, “commodification of location,” and an “ar-
chive of electronic trails” more extensive and detailed
than ever before, and all are highly marketable under the
auspices of the new “location-based services” industry
(Monmonier 2002).
Finally, only GPS was originally designed as a weap-
ons-support system. Aporta and Higgs refer only
obliquely to this important fact. The 24 signal-sending
satellites, the central ground-control station at the Space
Warfare Center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, U.S.A., from where all information is
uploaded, the U.S. Department of Defense’s ability to
shut down both military and civilian signals anytime
anywhere (this property was first tested against the Tal-
iban in Afghanistan in 2001), the funding of GPS by the
U.S. Congress, and the fact that the civilian GPS signal
will be operating only during “peacetime” are just some
of the components of an elaborate system complete with
Latourian centers of calculation, Foucauldian panopti-
con capabilities, and Deleuzean rhizomes spanning the
globe. GPS/GIS is a technology that modifies and trans-
forms the world that is revealed through it. The instru-
ments deliver American militarized realities, which is
quite different from the socio-ecological modifications
made by snowmobiles and rifles. Like everyone else, the
Inuit will have to decide how to address this new regime.
b ry a n p f a f f e n b e r g e r
Department of Science, Technology, and Society,
University of Virginia, 351 McCormick Rd., Box
400744, Charlottesville, VA 22904, U.S.A.
(bp@virginia.edu). 20 vii 05
This excellent paper shows why science-and-technology-
studies (STS) scholars (including historians and philos-
ophers of technology) should take anthropology seriously
and anthropologists concerned with technology should
engage in dialog with them. These studies are often con-
cerned with two goals (see, e.g., Jasanoff et al. 1995). First,
they challenge technological determinism (the doctrine
that technologies are nonsocial, exogenous entities that
result from scientific advances and alter society irre-
spective of human will or agency [Smith and Marx 1994,
Winner 1977]). From the perspective of these studies,
technological determinism is difficult to reconcile with
empirical evidence and leads to unjustified political ap-
athy and alienation. By showing that technologies typ-
ically result from social and political choices, STS schol-
ars affirm the need for broad public participation in
framing science and technology policy. Second, they try
to develop theories of technology—exemplified by Borg-
mann’s “device paradigm”—that retain some semblance
of universal applicability without amounting to tech-
nological determinism in disguise (see, e.g., Bijker,
Hughes, and Pinch 1987). To my mind, the question is
whether Borgmann’s theory is more or less universally
applicable rather than simply reintroducing technologi-
cal determinism through the back door. Aporta and
Higgs offer a qualified yes, but I am not so sure.
First, Borgmann’s device paradigm runs counter to
most recent STS scholarship, which stresses that “tech-
nology” has human and social as well as technical and
material aspects. Keeping a snowmobile running re-
quires technicians as well as fuel, for example. There are
different ways of providing these needed relations, and
some of them are more respectful of existing commu-
nities than others. Therefore, the impact of the snow-
mobile includes not just that of the technology but also
(at least) that of a particular type of support network and
the way in which particular existing communities re-

spond and adapt. GPS devices are being used, the authors
concede, “to deal with situations that in themselves
have been created” by the broader sociotechnical system
of which the GPS is an instantiation: “the need to hunt
on weekends . . . because of work and school obligations;
the lack of a detailed knowledge of the surroundings due
to fast transportation and less time on the land; and the
need to rationalize gasoline use.” It is not so much that
GPS technology encourages the Igloolik to give up en-
gaging folkways as that a new local economy, to some
extent the result of deliberate national, state, and local
choices, now places time at such a premium that people
cannot afford to engage in traditional wayfinding. If ex-
ternal choices were otherwise, perhaps time would not
be in such short supply and the technology would serve
only to supplement rather than replace traditional
wayfinding.
Second, I am not convinced that Borgmann’s charac-
terization of technology is empirically accurate. It is easy
to think of devices that disappear into the background,
remove focal points, and commoditize the technology’s
benefit, and that is clearly what engineering designers
have historically tried to accomplish. But more often
than not they leave holes that intrepid users can take
advantage of to subvert the engineers’ goals. Hacking,
for instance, transforms a would-be “invisible” technol-
ogy (computers and networks) into a focal activity for a
very real underground community. What is more, tra-
ditional engineering goals are not inevitable conse-
quences of the Cartesian mind-body distinction but the
result of deliberate choices made by the engineering
community—choices that, historically, have excluded
social and environmental concerns from the design pro-
cess. It is quite possible, however, to design technologies
differently. For example, a growing international move-
ment within science engineering argues that social jus-
tice and sustainability concerns should determine the
direction of scientific research and engineering design
(Gibbons 1999, Gibbons and Nowotny 2000).
The free/open-source software movement shows that
computer software is not necessarily driven by a dynamic
that makes it inimical to social engagement—indeed,
there is an argument that free/open-source software
amounts to a deliberately and self-conciously non-Borg-
mannesque technology. Rather than trying to make the
technology “disappear” into functionality, free/open-
source software advocates insist that the software source
code should be freely provided so that everyone can see
how the program functions. Further, the development
model is designed to promote social foci—richly collab-
orative networks of volunteer programmers who com-
pete for each other’s esteem rather than monetary re-
ward. In addition, the software is developed with the
understanding that it can be freely shared and copied—
which means, in practice, that it is available free to users
who do not have the means to purchase commercial op-
erating systems and software applications. The growing
availability of software such as the Linux operating sys-
tem and the Open Office.org applications suite is helping
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 749
spread the benefits of computer technology to millions
of people worldwide.
george wenzel
Department of Geography, McGill University, 805
Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A
2K6 (wenzel@felix.geog.mcgill.ca). 10 vii 05
Probably no culture group is thought to respond to rapid
technological change as dramatically as North American
(especially Canadian) Inuit,1 with each adoption/adap-
tation (rifle, snowmobile) usually being interpreted as a
marker of sociocultural decline (see Hughes 1965).
Aporta and Higgs provide a solid and well-presented eth-
nography of the latest addition to the Inuit hunter’s tool
kit, the GPS receiver, and of the intergenerational and
traditional culture-versus-modernity tensions that have
arisen regarding its benefits and costs. More interesting,
they also offer an analysis of technological innovation
among Inuit that differs significantly from most earlier
discussions in two important ways.
The first is that they recognize that tools and material
culture systems are often adopted for reasons related to
sociocultural events as much as to the raw efficiency of
the new item. With respect to the best-known such in-
troduction, the snowmobile, they show that its incor-
poration as a replacement for the dog team was in no
small part due to the government’s having moved Inuit
into centralized settlements (see Damas 2002), a process
which began before the appearance of the machine.
Second, adopting Borgmann’s device paradigm, they
choose not to dwell on the specifics of a technology.
Rather, they focus on the attributes and effects of tools
in systemic terms. That this is done in the context of
Inuit is gratifying because, while human adaptation, es-
pecially in the Arctic, has often been about technology
(the Thule Eskimo culture’s expansion, ca. AD 900–
1250, was as much a story of technologies—the dog team
and the umiak—as one of climate change and bowhead
whales), understanding of the impact of new artifacts on
Inuit ecological and cultural behaviors has been dis-
tinctly myopic.
The most immediate effect of Inuit’s adding GPS re-
ceivers to their tool kit is its impact on the cost of being
a hunter. To be fully equipped today (with a snowmobile
and sled, modest boat and motor, rifles, and camping
gear) can easily run to $25,000 or more once the cost of
operation and equipment depreciation are included in
the calculation. At the same time, GPS technology, along
with survival suits and two-way radios, makes Inuit
safer, and I suspect that older Inuit will soon see its safety
benefits while young hunters come to understand the
need to learn the patterns of ice, wind, and snow. And
while GPS use may be seen by non-Inuit as another turn
from the tradition, it is a tool that outsiders are unlikely
1. Despite the geographic and linguistic limits of the term, I will
use “Inuit” throughout this comment as a general referent for Es-
kimos, while also recognizing that GPS technology is also widely
used by Yu’pit and Aleut hunters.
750 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
to conflate with earlier importations such as the snow-
mobile or rifle—that is, to treat as another tool for bol-
stering the consumerist habits of Inuit (Best 1988).
This leads me to a quasi-criticism: In the late stages
of their excellent discussion, Aporta and Higgs note that
GPS reliance may contribute to Inuit loss of engagement
with the environment. I take this concern to mean loss
with regard not only to the natural environment but also
to an aspect of Inuit culture of which traditional way-
finding is a part. It may, therefore, be worth mentioning
that in the early 1970s older hunters spoke similarly
about the snowmobile, warning that without dogs to
sniff out seal breathing holes younger hunters would
have difficulty locating agluit, but by the decade’s end
opponents of snowmachines had accommodated to the
technology and adapted it to the specialized needs of seal
hunting.
In the end, I wonder whether the device paradigm nec-
essarily functions as formulated when transposed to
other cultural contexts. GPS technology, like the snow-
mobile and the telescopic rifle sight, does seem to dis-
tance the user from her/his environment, but today these
are core tools of the modern Inuit hunting adaptation.
Without considering how tools fit together to achieve
normative cultural objectives, not just to locate a point
in space (or catch a seal) but to sustain the material and
social needs of Inuit subsistence relations, we run the
risk of misunderstanding the adaptive utility of GPS use
much as the Inuit snowmobile adaptation was misin-
terpreted because we view the technology as displacing
a traditional (and more attractive) way of doing things
and, more important, because it is our experience that
our use of GPS can alienate us from our environment.
thomas widlok
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinquistics, PB 310,
6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands (thomas.widlok@
mpi.nl). 4 vii 05
This most welcome case study shows that the use of
GPS technology is a fruitful subject for anthropological
enquiry and that local adoptions and rejections of this
technology differ not only with regard to the specific
challenges posed by different environments but also in
that the technology enters the local scene in different
ways in different places (Widlok 1997; see also http://
www.cybertracker.co.za). However, I am not sure that
Borgmann’s ideas, at least as they are presented here,
provide the best way of understanding these processes.
The strict separation he seems to maintain between en-
gagement and disengagement obscures the facts that
there are different modes of engagement, engagement has
at least two possible opposites (namely, construction and
detachment), and the two modes are not mutually ex-
clusive but each “contains the seeds of the other” (Ingold
2000:216). Especially in a situation like that described
by Aporta and Higgs, where there are disparate uses of
GPS technology by old and young hunters, by rural and
urban folks, and in some settings as opposed to others,
it seems necessary to move from dichotomies to a more
action-oriented perspective.
It is also helpful that another opposition (commodity
versus gift) is partially collapsed with that of detachment
versus engagement. There is at least a third mode,
namely, sharing (see Widlok and Tadesse 2005), and peo-
ple can actively shift objects from one mode to the other,
for instance, by “singularizing,” that is, by excluding
them from the commodity sphere (Appadurai 1986). If
this is true even for money, the present article provides
enough evidence to suggest that we can (and should) also
trace how the “detached” GPS technology is embedded
in habitual ways of orientation as people make selective
use of it and make it instrumental for “engaging” young
people with old-timers.
If cognition is distributed (Hutchins) and skill depends
on bodily presence in a highly structured environment
(Ingold), then people may be seen as moving in and out
of skills rather than vice versa. Technology can open or
close paths and passages in this movement. It is but one
factor that channelizes the movement which can go both
ways. New coffeemakers with built-in coffee grinders
once again allow me to touch, smell, and judge the coffee
beans, whereas the earlier (less complex) models used
ready-made, blended coffee powder and lukewarm water
and made me rather drink tea. Admittedly, both lack the
“graceful degradation” (see Hutchins 1995:227) that an
even more complex network structure would provide
(i.e., chances are that there is either instantly coffee or
none at all). Similarly, the latest GPS products, with their
relatively low prices, a map-based display, built-in com-
munication with another GPS, etc., provide more op-
tions for engagement, perhaps not in comparison with
the old ways of the elders but in comparison with those
of the intermediate generation. Furthermore, using a
GPS receiver is a skill that also has a “deep structure”
in that it can be learned rapidly only by people who are
already engaged with the structured environment that
supports a GPS—that is, who are literate, know some
maths, know about computer interfaces, know about
batteries and about the risks of technology failure—and
have jobs that give them enough money to buy one (or
kin networks that allow them to borrow one). The short
training is therefore deceptive and should certainly not
lead us to assume that no engagement is necessary.
According to my reading of Aporta and Higgs, “en-
gagement” (or, worse, “authentic” engagement) is not a
matter of being in “direct” relations or “close to na-
ture”—this reproduces the distinction between culture
and nature that is part of our worldview—but indicates
the degree to which relationships are laid open or
eclipsed by technological devices. Moreover, if bodily in-
volvement is a criterion for engagement, it is also present
in GPS use, which involves fiddling with buttons and
deciphering symbolic displays and even leaves traces in
people’s bodies. Short Message Service-users of today say
that they commonly use the thumb and not the index
finger (when ringing a doorbell, for instance). The new
generation of hand-held GPS receivers has thumb-oper-
ated joysticks feeding into this same skill. The main

difference between this new skill and that of traditional
wayfinding seems to me not a higher degree of artifici-
ality but a different degree of dependency (above all on
the U.S. military and on manufacturers) than when being
trained by elders and ultimately a shift in the distribu-
tion of power.
Reply
claudio aporta and eric higgs
Ottawa, Canada. 15 viii 05
Borgmann’s enigmatic definition “Technology is the char-
acter of contemporary life” (1984) exposes a context in
which it requires more effort and greater clarity to resist
an increasingly broad pattern of commoditization and dis-
engagement. In figuring technology as a pattern of rela-
tionships between individuals/communities and the ar-
tifacts and processes that dominate our lives, we are
simultaneously aware of the effects of technology and
some of the ways we resist the tide. It is this philosophical
insight that we believe adds a rich interpretation to the
contemporary cultural theories of anthropologists such as
Latour, Ingold, and Appadurai. One of our main points,
therefore, is to strengthen the bridge that has been built
between anthropology and the philosophy of technology
by scholars such as Pfaffenberger and Hakken.
We agree fully with Palmer’s assertion that Borg-
mann’s theory will benefit from more attention to the
politics of engagement. While we are not particular in
our focus on political processes or realities, it is at least
implicit in our work that the notion of engagement is
hitched to the very problems of “differently constituted
engagements.” In fact, our point is that devices cannot
be understood independent of social, economic, ecolog-
ical, political, and cultural processes or without regard
to the web of other devices that operate. Our concern,
then, is to ensure that specific cultural rights to self-
determination are respected in the face of rapid changes
in technology. A focus on the material and discursive
realities of changing social and physical relationships
will improve Borgmann’s particular notion of engage-
ment.
We appreciate the correctives offered by Palmer and
Rundstrom and are dismayed that they take our quota-
tion of Abler as a generalization about what geographers
think. We are aware of the sophistication of theory in
cultural geography, although we do not specifically ad-
dress the valuable body of literature written by geogra-
phers on new cartographic and survey technologies. Our
main concern was to link two disciplines (anthropology
and philosophy) through technology, and our quotation
of Abler was incidental. The “geographer’s dream”
should of course be read not as the dream of all geog-
raphers but rather as an example of a particular way of
looking at reality not only in geography but in all dis-
ciplines. We acknowledge that a comprehensive under-
a p o r t a a n d h i g g s Satellite Culture F 751
standing of technology requires a multidisciplinary ap-
proach. As regards their criticism that we did not cite
the works of Latour, Habermas, Foucault and others, all
we can claim is that we made the arbitrary choice of
focusing on a writer little known to anthropologists, as
we believe that this is our distinctive contribution to the
discussion of technology. Finally, Palmer and Rund-
strom’s assertion that GPS technology is already widely
incorporated into various devices only serves to amplify
our points about engagement and pattern.
Hakken is one of the anthropologists who is active in
creating a bridge between anthropology and technology
studies (specifically philosophy of technology). His call
for more attention to the policies that bring about change
in the way we deal with technology is a logical and prac-
tical extension of our work. Our motivation for writing
the paper was to provide a new way of thinking through
the dilemma felt by Inuit hunters and travelers in Igloo-
lik: neither the tendency to presume local cultural ad-
aptation nor the dire predictions of cultural destruction
made by many commentators on formerly isolated peo-
ples will solve the problems created by the rapid and
unprecedented introduction of technology. Only through
a recognition of technology-as-pattern and interlocking
economic, ecological, and social realities will policies be
formed that achieve self-determination and locally ap-
propriate responses.
We did not intend, as Widlok suggests, a “strict sep-
aration” of engagement and disengagement. These are
instead analytic concepts that describe specific patterns
of social interaction, and one of the main findings in our
analysis of GPS technology is that there is no one way
of using the instrument, nor is there a straightforward
cause-and-effect relationship between its use and dis-
engagement. One cannot be either fully engaged or dis-
engaged, and certainly there are many hybrid formula-
tions. The notion of engagement points to a particular
problem that is socially relevant and warrants concern.
Our account of fieldwork pushes a strongly ecological
approach that blurs the conventional distinction be-
tween nature and culture.
Pfaffenberger’s generous comments belie a potential
misunderstanding of Borgmann’s theory of the device
paradigm as regards technological determinism. The pat-
tern of decomposition of things that matter into com-
modities and machinery constitutes a dematerialization
of technology and opens up the greater prospect of hu-
man and social interpretations of technology. If anything,
Borgmann is a leader in the philosophy of technology in
countering the force of determinism. In pointing to the
open-source software movement Pfaffenberger calls at-
tention to one of the central debates that have swirled
around Borgmann’s theory. Can a device become a thing,
or, in other words, can a disengaged relationship between
person and device be transformed into one of engage-
ment? We agree that subversion is possible, and we made
this clear in our description of different ways of using
GPS technology. It is still appropriate, however, to ask
questions of engagement and disengagement regarding
such movements. In other words, we do not believe that
752 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 46, Number 5, December 2005
open-source software should be straightforwardly taken
as an engaging thing or practice.
Wenzel, an Arctic researcher, finds our results consis-
tent with his experience. We did not intend to imply that
GPS technology as such would lead to cultural loss and
were careful to stress the complex process of adaptation
with regard to not only GPS but also any other tech-
nology. This is a main theme in Wenzel’s work. How-
ever, the rapid pace of its introduction, the way it in-
terlocks with other devices, and the largely concealed
quality of its components make adaptation difficult. Our
conclusion pushes the issue of technology beyond the
concrete case of Inuit to a broader context of people’s
relationship with contemporary technologies. Since a po-
litical misreading of our assertions (e.g., by animal rights
activists) is possible, we welcome Wenzel’s concern. It
prompts us to make this point even clearer: the use of
GPS technology is not creating a straightforward replace-
ment of Inuit methods and the technology per se is not
undermining the Inuitness of Igloolik hunters.
Beyond advances in the study of technology in differ-
ent disciplines, old deterministic ideas still abound.
Borgmann’s theory can be enriched, as we suggest, with
other approaches. We feel, however, that it is particularly
effective in making us think about our everyday dealings
with technology. It helps us to ask orienting questions
about our own relationship with technology. Our article
and the comments on it make it clear that boundaries
between disciplines must be crossed if we are to under-
stand these issues in their full complexity.
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