Elephants text-cast their approach toward human settlements
An alert system by which rangers receive text messages from a phone card placed in an elephant's collar when the animal crosses over a GPS-enabled border into human territory is at once saving elephants' lives and human crops. The Toronto Star (10/14)
Bless the inventor of text messaging. Teenagers, Indonesians, and now elephants! Text messaging in Indonesia is an indispensable technology. They love it. They thrive on it. And expect responses immediately and frequently. I probably receive somewhere in the ballpark of 15 messages daily of “bu buat apa skrng?” (what are you doing now, Mrs.?). Plus numerous others with contents of more substance. They start rolling in about 6 am. Does it really matter what I’m doing at 6 in the morning? Locals have most likely been up for hours by that time, but, I however am sleeping! Ahhh… indeed, days I get to sleep until 6:30 are such a luxury! Admittedly, my shorthand text messaging language skills are much better than my ability to speak and write proper Indonesian. And probably more useful! Especially since elephants can now text message.
Text messaging… check.
But just in case I run into any elephant’s I needed a quickie on Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS). Thus, last week I completed a training on GIS, Geographic Information Systems, of which encompasses the technology of GPS. Handheld devices. Computers. Technology. Satellites. It all comes together to compromise a system that’s more than GoogleMaps and your car’s TomTom with an English accent. It’s an amazing 3D, inter-connected world. And obviously now we aren’t the only ones with instant communication.
GPS… check.
Elephants… ?
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