In the jungle - a animal preserve that spans parts of South Africa, Namibia and The Congo - modern technology has partnered with an ancient art to help protect the wildlife. Preserving the legacy of the Kalahari bushmen, today's bushmen trackers continue to successfully track game. They can follow nearly invisible animal tracks and identify the animals that made them, when they made them, and even what they ate along the way. These bushmen, like their ancestors before them, are an invaluable resource of information about the local environment. For generations, conservationists have sought to tap that knowledge.
Now, despite their inability to read and write, the bushmen can record what they see and share their unique wisdom with the rest of the world by using handheld computer devices linked with satellites in space. Information that has never been written down is now being logged, cataloged, and used to map the environment. Under this program - developed by Louis Liebenberg, Director of Cybertracker Projects in South Africa, Namibia, and the Congo - these wired trackers are enabling conservationists to accurately follow the wildlife across the African bush.
It works like this: when a tracker sees a black rhinoceros or other endangered species, he matches it with a picture icon on his handheld computer. The attached global positioning system or GPS - a technology used around the world by planes, cars, and boats for positioning and mapping purposes - pinpoints the tracker's signal to a ground location within seventy-five yards of his position. When he returns to camp, he uploads the information to a central computer. The information is mapped so that park and conservation officials know precisely where endangered animals are located. This helps the everyone drastically reduce threats from both predators and poachers.
Add an internet connection into the mix, or wireless capability, and that information can be sent anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. This is not so unusual. The work of cybertrackers and the African bushmen is just one example of the technological revolution reshaping our world. Do we really know how to use the Web? Consider this: a 2004 Outsell study of over 12,335 knowledge workers found that:
And 88 percent of these people say they are "skilled" or "very adept" 'net users! Is this feeling of being overwhelmed due to rapid advancements in information technologies - the Internet, electronic notepads, a never-ending fount of publicly-accessible information?
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