Profile of Technology Topic
The technology I chose to write my paper on is the Public Land Survey. I picked this because it has been covered in my classes but only been briefly described. The PLSS was the way the government subdivided the land west of the Appalachian mountains into lots for sale, first into six mile square townships and then subdividing the townships into smaller lots. The PLSS replaced the metes and bounds system of land ownership, which was a description of your parcel of land by landmarks. For example a parcel could be described as starting at the old willow tree down by the fork in Mud Creek, then pacing off for 100 poles till you get to the big rock, turn west for another 120 poles etc. When the PLSS was completed it streamlined ownership titles because land could now be described accurately with the common latitude and longitude coordinate system. This achieved a major break through in efficiently for the bureaucrats in the state and federal government and removed a long standing traditional form of land ownership.
Comments
I thought I commented on this earlier, but my comment did not post...Anyway, I was wondering what the negative cultural outcomes in relation to land surveying were? How has it changed our culture?
Posted by: Bess Rubin | March 9, 2009 2:33 PM
Wow, nice. This is an interesting and original topic and something I had never thought about before. Ignorantly, I subconsciously assumed that American land was always divided up evenly. I'm sure there must have been some difficulties if there were a plateau or a huge lake in the middle a 6 mile plot of land. How did people at that time deal with terrain difficulties?
Posted by: Luis C | March 9, 2009 2:44 PM
This should be a very interesting topic. I too had no idea that American land laws were not always divided up equally. The only question that I have is how have these laws had a negative affect on culture?
Posted by: Tyler E. | March 9, 2009 2:47 PM
For the negative affect I was going off of Postmans view of efficiency, bureaucracy and the lost of tradition. Before I thought I understood these but now I will go back and review it since I did not make my point. I am trying to show that having definite boundaries makes our lives more mechanical and precise. There are no longer any "hand shake" deals, every land parcel is accurately accounted for with relatively no error. I thought this removed the human factor from what I thought was an ancient tradition. I do not know how land was divided before, not sure if it was a communal ownership or something else. The point I am trying to make is by having definite boundaries it shows that we are already accepting numbers calculated by technology and a skilled “expert” individual as superior to what we believe and can do ourselves. Which eventually led to the belief that technology can do no wrong and the total acceptance of its outputs. Hope that makes more sense?
I’m not totally sure on that Luis, I was wondering about that too. Like how would you survey a swamp and leave behind accurate marker posts that will not shift? I am hoping I can find a paper that details the what the surveyors had to go through and how they solved problems like that.
Posted by: Nat C | March 9, 2009 10:18 PM