Saklan Institute of AnthropoGeographyOrignially placed on the web, 1998 |
| AT THE BEGINNING OF EUROPEAN CONTACT over two centuries ago, the Spanish came to conquer the lands of Upper California. Though now long gone, the cultures they touched have been changed utterly since then, as have those of the peoples who came afterwards...and yet culture change continues to this day. |
| Shortly after contact in the region, the Spanish reached their limit of occupation a little ways to the north of the San Francisco bay. To the east, their newly occupied land stretched roughly as far as the ridges of the hills overlooking the bay. These were the same boundaries ascribed to there as the traditional geographic limits of the native peoples inhabiting the area at the time of contact. |
| Although the European invaders held the bay, legend holds there existed a giant village on the other side of those hills, towards the interior, a place known to the coastal peoples as 'Saklan'. bigger than any village the Spanish had ever seen, Saklan was home to a people who resisted occupation well into the mission period. It was said they never were directly subdued, succumbing only later to disease and neglect in the time of the Mexican and American successors to the colonists of Spain. |
| The Saklan Web Site is an outpost of the Cyberage in the same way, a little off to the side, a way over the hills, always resisting pressure to be merely staid, placid and respectably predictable. Here you'll find coverage of culture change and clash through essays, arguments, photo documentaries and biting commentary. |
| Today the World Wide Web is the location of one of the most vibrant instances of culture change in recent times (and conflict too, although somewhat obscurely). Perhaps not a revolution in itself yet, nevertheless, the web moves along history's track like a landslide of change, overwhelming to some only when it is already directly upon them. The sheer expansion of information itself will be seen in the future to have been actually a very potent agent of culture change for good and for bad. |
| The Web is an explosion in slow motion, one which will accelerate the consumption of education in ways undreamt of in the past. Formal education will become informal education and casual means of collection will bring in a quality of documentary information unattainable in this way years before. |
| The future has similar tributaries of change, some only now viewable as small streams or rivulets. Linux represents one of these avenues of change that will probably renew the world of personal computers in ways that seemed mere wishful thinking in the past. The advent of real and viable hand-held devices that are readily available to all may be another vector of culture change in ways we can only glimpse at the moment. Most importantly, the point of being a object of such rapid and deep changes is to be ready to recognize them and, in turn, be prepared to become a subject of change that can act on it. |
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Saklan Institute of AnthropoGeography Publications pageWilliam Bunge
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Copyright © Saklan 1998-2023
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