Social Responsibility and Theoretical Choice - Part 4

Social Implications of Technology Use on Backpacker Culture

As with all technologies, the tourism technologies proposed in this thesis would change the environments they are introduced into, and the behaviour of the people using them. There are elements of this which are reasonably predictable and elements which are not. For example, community authoring poses challenges for existing models of creating guidebooks. It could be that backpackers on the road will generate more current, accurate, and detailed information than professional authors had previously provided. This could easily result in the replacement of experienced paid authors with an inexperienced swarm of unpaid travel authors. It is also true that professional authors work hard and provide insightful, useful and comprehensive overviews, and that this may not be matched by amateurs. This could result in a competition between the two authorship paradigms. This scenario would be likely to result in a shift in the focus of professional authors, or perhaps the gradual elimination of this job role.

Similarly there is a small portion of the backpacker population who genuinely want to experience untainted foreign cultures, isolate themselves from home, travel without a guidebook and use only the most basic travel equipment. Because of the increase in Internet cafes, backpackers carrying mobile phones, and the number of backpackers, it is increasingly hard for these people to find the travel experience they are looking for (Huxley, 2005). This is analogous to the increasing difficulty of finding new species on a planet that does not hold many unexplored locations. The technologies I am proposing in this research would make it easier and safer to travel, which would increase travellers’ confidence in going to more remote locations (and thus increase their impact on the destinations). It would enhance the group-formation abilities of backpackers travelling alone, which could result in more group activities and more partying. The ability to e-mail, call and instant message from a mobile device carried in a pocket could result in backpackers connecting more with people at home or from a similar culture, instead of actively engaging in the cultures in which they are travelling.

So what is the aim of our technology design? Should we follow the path of the Luddites and destroy the Internet cafes and mobile phones? Should we protect the guidebook authors and instead of replacing them with community authoring technologies, seek ways to improve the quality of their reportage? Should we design technologies which help to reduce the ability for others to contact backpackers and guide a minority of backpackers to pristine unexplored locations? All of these options are theoretically possible, but it depends on what social aims we have, where sufficient markets are, and how much of the result we can predict. It may well be that guidebook authors will go the way of human traffic directors and telephone switchboard operators. Is this a natural evolutionary process, or is it a role which is respected in society to the degree that we wish to protect it when it is obsolete?


Next Post: Where is Our Technology Design Leading Us?