What would happen if we dropped a bunch of iPhones on North Sentinel Island?

I would bet money that there are already mobile phones on the island. My guess is that some guys from the island get out and work elsewhere and have acquired phones. Not sure they can get a signal on the island, but if they work elsewhere they'll have phones to make contact when they go to work.

I've been working with "indigenous" people groups for 30 years and they are always, always more connected to the modern world than our quaint idealism wants them to be. There are villages all over the world who have no electricity but have mobile phones. Someone sets up a solar charger or puts a car battery on a bike, charges up in town, and goes to villages with a charging service. And like I said, it's almost universal that young men will get out of the village, look for opportunities elsewhere, and bring their phones back home with them.

10-15 years ago in the Amazon, I started seeing signs appearing in remote tributaries with a drawing of a phone and an arrow. They were telling you that if you follow the arrow and go up the hill, you'll get a signal.

I could be wrong, maybe the Sentinelese are truly cut off from the modern world, but throughout the world the poorest of the poor and the most simple and remote people have mobile phones.

You could be right, of course. But given some of their interactions with 'outsiders' (murdering them and shooting arrows at aircraft), I'd be surprised if any of these guys actually work off of the island and have a phone. They are allegedly the last people group not exposed to modern society.

I started to wonder today about some of these guys getting off of the island, going to college, starting a career, etc. I wonder if it would even be possible - assuming that they have not indeed had much contact with the outside world.

I once watched a documentary about some runners that moved to the U.S. from the bush in Africa (not sure what country). On the plane ride over, one of them was given a stick of butter with his meal. He opened it up and started eating the stick of butter as if it were a granola bar. He had no clue what it was, and he was definitely from an area that had more interaction with the outside world than the folks on North Sentinel Island.

I bet the Sentinelese would do a bunch of comical stuff like that initially if they weren't taught.

setyourselffree wrote:

I bet the Sentinelese would do a bunch of comical stuff like that initially if they weren't taught.

And we would do equally comical stuff if we tried to live in their society. When I lived for two years in a village with no electricity, no toilets, no outside communication (1980s), and no english spoken, I was laughed at every day for how stupid I was. I was ignorant of how to do the most basic things in their lifestyle.

And no, they didn't have some great wisdom of the ancients. They knew how to do their stuff and I knew how to do my stuff and we looked pretty silly to each other until we go to know each other and realized folks is just folks.

kihene ta wrote:

When I lived for two years in a village with no electricity, no toilets, no outside communication (1980s), and no english spoken, I was laughed at every day for how stupid I was.

Yeah right.

kihene ta wrote:

setyourselffree wrote:

I bet the Sentinelese would do a bunch of comical stuff like that initially if they weren't taught.

And we would do equally comical stuff if we tried to live in their society. When I lived for two years in a village with no electricity, no toilets, no outside communication (1980s), and no english spoken, I was laughed at every day for how stupid I was. I was ignorant of how to do the most basic things in their lifestyle.

I wouldn't last a week on a remote island, sadly enough. I envy my Eagle Scout friends who could.

I would certainly be laughed at by natives if living without modern amenities.

libs = liars wrote:

kihene ta wrote:

When I lived for two years in a village with no electricity, no toilets, no outside communication (1980s), and no english spoken, I was laughed at every day for how stupid I was.

Yeah right.

I'm not going to come out of anonymity on letsrun, but everyone who knows me in real life is sick of hearing my stories and seeing photos from 30 years ago. The only exaggeration in there is the "no outside communication" - the island had a two-way radio that communicated with the capital and we could have communicated if there'd been a real emergency. I also had a short-wave radio to get BBC and VOA, and we sent out letters (aerograms) and got letters back when boats made occasional trips to the capital. I guess "no electricity" might be an exaggeration because we (and the locals) used batteries for radios and flashlights and had a solar panel running to a car battery to charge our computer (80s laptop). Also, I probably wasn't laughed at literally every day.

The "no toilets" is definitely not an exaggeration. There was a certain beach you visited to do your business.

kihene ta wrote:

10-15 years ago in the Amazon, I started seeing signs appearing in remote tributaries with a drawing of a phone and an arrow. They were telling you that if you follow the arrow and go up the hill, you'll get a signal.

I'd be very interested in the specifics of this story, as my experiences suggest that window of time is when cell phones became prevalent in the USA. In my experience in Africa, I gather that cell phones became huge 7-10 years ago (although that is not to say they weren't present in 2000). I haven't been to Brazil, so maybe they had a little different timetable.

I suppose those signs are probably a sign that phones were a relatively new and rare thing for the area, which would make sense. There wouldn't be a need for such a sign if everyone had one (and there was service pretty much everywhere).

We went to the "indigenous" (yagua and ticuna) areas in the region where Brazil, Colombia, and Peru come together in 2004 - 2006. The tributaries are so windy that you go a long time but still aren't that far from cities or the Amazon itself (i.e., the highway) as the crow flies.

We were going up a tributary and I'm thinking we're really in the jungle when our local guy pulls out a cell phone and calls someone to figure out how to navigate the next bit. Kinda disenchanting.

I'm not sure how new the phones were then or what the situation is now, but they were not uncommon then. Some of the villages we went to had no electric supply, but someone had set up a shelter at a spot where they got a signal and it was like a phone booth where you went to make a call. Not sure how they charged them there, but there were some solar panels here and there.

Some projects I'm working on now are based on the fact that cell coverage is ubiquitous in rural Africa. They are instrumenting handpumps and other things in remote villages to send cell signals reporting on pump conditions and water use back to government agencies and NGOs. Mobile phones have also become the banking system in much of Africa. Phone credit is deposited, moved around, and spent like a debit card.

kihene ta wrote:

Some projects I'm working on now are based on the fact that cell coverage is ubiquitous in rural Africa. They are instrumenting handpumps and other things in remote villages to send cell signals reporting on pump conditions and water use back to government agencies and NGOs. Mobile phones have also become the banking system in much of Africa. Phone credit is deposited, moved around, and spent like a debit card.

Thanks for the detailed response - I can definitely attest to the widespread use of cell phones in the parts of Africa I have been to. And from what I gather, it went from hardly anyone having one to basically EVERYONE having one (or often, multiple phones!).

Don't know if this is true or not, but the small number of uncontacted tribes still out there are at a massive risk of disease if they come into contact with the rest of the world.

Basically, it would be the same as happened with Native Americans when the Europeans arrived, their immune systems would have no ability to deal with the infections that the rest of the world is used to.

I suspect the iPhones plan might fail when either the indigenous people failed to turn them on; failed to read anything if they did turn them on; or failed to recharge them when the batteries died - seeing as there is no electricity there.

A bunch of iPhones is more than enough to destroy a tribe, all it takes is an empty coke bottle

runthecountry wrote:

Thanks for the detailed response - I can definitely attest to the widespread use of cell phones in the parts of Africa I have been to. And from what I gather, it went from hardly anyone having one to basically EVERYONE having one (or often, multiple phones!).

One of the old measures of development was what % of houses had phone lines. Cell phones leapfrogged that, making it a worthless measure. Like you said, it seemed to happen overnight.

By the way, the island village where I lived in the 80s, which was almost pre-industrial, now has a facebook page. I can look on there and see them doing their traditional celebrations with a bunch of them recording it on their smart phones. When I was there it took months to get a letter back and forth. My wife and I made two phone calls while we were there. We took a boat to a resort and called home for Christmas and it cost $150. Now anyone on the island could call me right now for pennies. Different world.

Makes me a little sad to see it, but who am I to tell them they need to remain quaint and can't have the modern stuff I have?