Sound & invention · Story 1 of 14
The Hawaiian Technology Inside the Sound of Modern Music
Listen to a steel guitar bend toward a note and you may hear country music.
Tech From Here: Hawaiʻi
Technology looks different from here.
Fourteen sourced stories about the networks, instruments, standards, archives and living systems Hawaiʻi gave the world, and the people too often edited out of the record.
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Networks & communication · Story 2 of 14
A Rule Tested Between Hawaiian Islands Changed How Shared Networks Speak
Before a device can send a message, it has to answer a deceptively political question: who gets to speak when everyone shares the same channel?
Warning systems · Story 3 of 14
After Hilo Had No Warning, Hawaiʻi Helped Build a Pacific One
The lighthouse went first.
Law & language · Story 4 of 14
When Two Versions of the Law Disagree
The Hawaiian Kingdom governed through laws published in two languages at once.
Archives & search · Story 5 of 14
Hawaiʻi Built a Searchable World Before Search Engines
The first issue of Ka Lama Hawaii, in February 1834, carried a woodcut of an elephant.
Language & computing · Story 6 of 14
The Two Marks Your Computer Had to Learn
The ʻokina looks like a stray comma.
Water & governance · Story 7 of 14
The Machine Inside the Mountain
The mountain did not want a hole through it.
Indigenous engineering · Story 8 of 14
The Gate That Thinks With the Tide
The kuapā at Heʻeia runs through Kāneʻohe Bay: stone and coral stacked into a wall that holds tide water without shutting it out.
Earth systems · Story 9 of 14
The Observatory That Turned a Volcano into a Century-Long Signal
A volcano does not announce an eruption in a language made for humans.
Space & infrastructure · Story 10 of 14
The Golf Balls Above Kaʻena Point Tracked America’s Early Satellite Programs
From the Waiʻanae coast, the white radomes above Kaʻena Point look almost sculptural: two pale spheres balanced on a ridge, visible from the highway below like something dropped from orbit rather than built by hand.
Land & data · Story 11 of 14
The Lines That Changed the Land
Before land can be bought, sold, or mortgaged as a parcel, it has to be made legible as one.
Agriculture & biotechnology · Story 12 of 14
The Papaya Was Engineered. So Was the Rescue System.
In the version of this story that gets repeated, a virus nearly wiped out Hawaiʻi's papaya industry, and scientists built a genetically engineered papaya that stopped it.
Ocean energy · Story 13 of 14
Hawaiʻi Once Powered a Barge with the Temperature Difference in the Ocean
On August 2, 1979, a barge floating off Keāhole Point on Hawaiʻi Island's Kona Coast generated electricity from a resource that surrounds the islands in layers.
Standards & time · Story 14 of 14
Hawaiʻi Once Ran on a Half-Hour the Continent Forgot
At noon on January 13, 1896, public clocks across Hawaiʻi were supposed to agree.
Made by RN Collins
RN Collins is a storytelling strategist, content and experiential producer, resident neuroscientist and design technologist.
Anatomist and medical educator. M.S. Anatomy & Neurobiology, Boston University.