Technology-driven fieldwork is taking anthropologists to some unusual locations. For instance, when chip maker Intel sent anthropologist John Sherry to Alaska last year to study the way commercial fisherman there use laptops, he found the machines shackled to the outside of the fishermen’s trucks, where they were used to record the catch. This led Intel to realise the importance of developing “ruggedised” laptop equipment that can withstand extremely wet, cold and bumpy conditions.
Sherry is now using his skills in ethnographic fieldwork to find out why cybercafes appear to prosper in some towns or cities but not others.
