It's good to be an
elk. At least, it is if you happen to live and forage near the town of Sequim,
in northwestern Washington state. Or for
that matter in Clam Lake, Wisconsin or in certain areas of Minnesota.
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A bull elk. Image in the public domain. |
But in 2001, a
wildlife biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife had an
interesting idea. Shelly Ament came up with what amounts to an interactive elk
crossing: Thanks to a project she designed and spearheaded, about 10% of the
elk–mainly the herd leaders–were equipped with radio collars similar to
those used to track wolves, bears, and other wildlife. But these collars were different. When the elk
come within about 400 yards of the highway, the collars emit a laser signal
that causes roadside warning signs to flash "ELK X-ING."
The idea worked.
Many fewer animals were killed (in fact, only one elk was killed during that
first year), and the herd is now healthy and reproducing well. With the help of
this technology, the people and the herd have been able to get along.
Ament's idea caught
on, and now several other areas of the country are also employing
radio-activated warning signs to reduce the likelihood of collisions.
That's the thing
about innovation: When a technology is created, no one knows where it will
lead, the uses to which it will be put, or the other technologies with which it
will be combined. When the first laser was built in 1960, one assumes that the
inventors had absolutely no idea that their invention would be used to protect
elk herds. (Or that lasers would turn up in optical disc drives, 3D printers,
and scanners, none of which had themselves yet been invented.)
We simply have no
way of knowing what "feedback loops" (to use a term popular
with anthropologists) might result from an invention. While researching Leveling the
Playing Field, I read Steven Johnson's How We Got to Now,
an enthralling and entertaining book that lays out some of these loops, tracing
some of the ways in which early technologies have had far-reaching effects that
no one could possibly have foreseen.
Here's a brief
extract from Leveling the Playing Field
that discusses this phenomenon:
…Johnson lays out a fascinating series of those [feedback] loops, some of them so extended and seemingly so disconnected that one would never see the associations among them without Johnson’s expert (and enjoyable) guidance. And yet, they are very connected.
For instance, he traces the development of the printing press and explains how it caused an explosion of inventiveness not only among printers and writers and the like (which was to be expected), but also among glass and spectacle makers who now found themselves seeking optometric solutions for a seriously myopic population that had never realized its eyesight was deficient until, thanks to Gutenberg, so many people found themselves attempting to read the books, journals, and broadsheets that were suddenly available. But the loop doesn’t end there. The explosion of lens crafters and experimenters ultimately resulted in the invention of both the microscope and the telescope; the former then led to germ theory and other medical discoveries, while the latter helped Galileo and others challenge the Aristotelian notion that the heavens revolved around the Earth. In a way, the invention of the printing press may have led to antibiotics and to space travel.
So who knows where
digital elk crossings will lead? Is it much of a leap to anticipate traffic
signs that will respond to the presence of your phone or watch, freezing
traffic if you happen to step (or fall)
out onto a busy street? You could end up owing your life to a herd of elk. (Or,
more properly, to a Washington state wildlife biologist named Shelly Ament.)
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