Disclaimer: This post can’t come anywhere near explaining just how incredibly awesome this person was. I’ll try my best, but theres really no way for me to convey the magnitude of what he has accomplished.
In 1976 a man guided a voyaging canoe 2,300 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti using no modern navigation equipment. It was the first voyage in over 600 years to be navigated without instruments on an ancestral Polynesian sea route. The successful navigation sparked pride in the Hawaiian and Polynesian culture and started a renaissance of voyaging, canoe building, and non-instrument navigation that has continued to grow, spreading across Polynesia going even into the far reaches of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Rapanui (Easter Island).
On Sunday, July 11th, the world lost an amazing individual. His name was Mau Piailug. He came from a small island in the Pacific called Satawal in the state of Yap. This island in Micronesia has a population of about 600 people. He was a master navigator, a beacon of pride for Pacific Islanders around the world, and a visionary beyond his years.
What makes Mau incredible is not that he came from a small island, but that he was a master and teacher of the original Cloud computing. This isnt what youre thinking. Theres no server farm involved. Theres no FTPs, databases or any kind of technology at all. Not even a compass. Seriously. He did it by looking at clouds in the sky. He knew that if certain clouds were going one way and certain other clouds were going another way, then the weather would be a certain way. He knew the changing of tides by feel, the locations of stars- almost by magic (Nainoa Thompson tells the story of how Mau was able to find the Southern Cross behind him without looking) and was a wealth of knowledge in all things regarding ocean navigation.
What makes him even more incredible is this: He used a type of ”Cloud Storage” for his data. No, really. You’ll see what I mean:
Mau had something that was irreplaceable. Something with so much value, that there is no money in the world for it. This something is 3,000 years worth of tradition . He shared his information with people by teaching, first Nainoa Thompson of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, about ancient Polynesian navigation techniques. From there Nainoa and Mau taught dozens of other navigators. This allowed him to replicate his data, as best he could, creating “backups” of his knowledge. He said at the time, that he did it because the people of his island were becoming Westernized. That the children didn’t want to learn the old ways. And that he hoped that one day his people would come to those he taught and learn from them.
Imagine that, organic data storage and retrieval.
Thats truly amazing, considering he could barely speak english, had to go through cultural barriers, plus everything else, just to pass his information on to future generations. And on top of that, it wasnt just a matter of clicking a few buttons and boom! done. It took him years and years and years to do this. But he ensured the longevity of his data, for many years.
Truly an amazing visionary.
You can find out more information about “Papa” Mau Piailug at the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s website. The article by Nainoa Thompson is truly amazing.
