How technology aids wilderness communities:
● Technological developments have helped make life easier in cold environments
○ Digital technology offers new development opportunities → can help minimise :
■ Environmental damage
■ Cultural erosion
● By late 1980s → isolated villages in Scandinavia had been provided with shared computer/internet facilities
○ For isolated communities within the Arctic Circle → internet became a survival lifeline
● Inuit communities in Alaska have discovered the value of ICT for sustainable development
○ ICT = information and communications technology
○ eg/ 1990 → wireless radio and satellite links were provides for main populated areas
■ Isolated parts of Alaska have been able to improve their access to technology
■ They can now receive phone calls in places where landlines are still absent
● Two-way conferencing allows children in remote towns to have access to education
○ eg/ local government in Canada has collaborated with tech company Cisco
■ Allows children to be taught in real time (live across a screen) by teachers in other schools
■ Students able to collaborate with other students of the same age
● University of Alaska offers a range of degrees/courses that can be completed online
● 2015 → work began for threading a 15, 600 km fibre optic cable
○ Easier to lay fibre optic due to thinning ice
○ Data will run from Tokyo to London in 154 milliseconds
■ Brings globalisation to world’s remotest places → Alaska can communicate with the world
Reasons for relocating companies to cold environments:
● Some of world’s largest internet companies have relocated data centres to cold environments
○ Offices have low environmental impacts
○ Offer employment to people in world’s remote places
■ eg/ Google and Facebook in Scandinavia
● Data centres are very expensive to run
○ All information needs to be stored and backed up
○ Energy is used to power computers and cool them down
● eg/ Facebook
○ Giant data centre in Luleå, Sweden
○ Site covers 30, 000 m 2 → cost $750 million to build
○ Is part of Sweden’s coldest regions → offers Facebook:
■ Cold climate
● Short, mild summers and long, cold, snowy winters
● Winter temperatures are well below freezing for 8 months of the year
○ High power computer equipment can cool itself down at no cost
■ Low HEP costs
● Luleå lies near HEP stations
● Provides cheap electricity for lighting
● Heat from computers is used to warm staff offices
● Luleå is home to 2000 employees working for several large technological industries
