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re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions Podcast
E-Bracelets and the Digitization of the Pilgrimage to Mecca

E-Bracelets and the Digitization of the Pilgrimage to Mecca

re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions vor 8 Jahren

With around 2 million pilgrims travelling to the holy city of Mecca every year during the five days of the Hajj season and performing the rites in a very confined space, the logistics of the Muslim pilgrimage pose an extreme challenge to the authorities.

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Miriam Seyffarth Pilgrims have flocked to Mecca to perform rituals
of pilgrimage even before the advent of Islam. Since the 1950s
numbers have risen steadily and are being capped at around 2
million pilgrims per Hajj season nowadays. This is due to natural
constraints: The holy sites in and around Mecca can take only so
many people performing the rituals at the same time. Every Hajj
season is a challenge for authorities: be it crowd control issues
in bottleneck spots that lead to mass stampedes, accidents like
fires or the collapsing of buildings, outbreaks of diseases or the
general challenge of organizing logistics and infrastructure for 2
million people from 180 different countries from around the world,
many of them elderly or illiterate. The Saudi government has
striven to solve all these issues by implementing technical
solutions: CCTV and software models are supposed to manage
crowd control and an app called Manasikana was developed to give
pilgrims guidance while they are moving in and around Mecca.
E-bracelets for pilgrims were introduced in 2016 and became
mandatory in 2017: They store personal information like port of
entry, visa number, passport number and address. Another invention
in 2016 were the electronic coupons that you can now buy wirelessly
from the Islamic Development Bank to perform the ritual sacrifice
of a lamb. Because of space constraints not every pilgrim can
perform the sacrifice on-site, now you get a text message notifying
you that a lamb has been slaughtered on your behalf. In summary,
2017 marks the year in which many technical solutions for
longstanding logistic issues have reached a new level. While all
this seems very nice and up-to-date at first sight, many questions
arise: In this talk we are going to assess if these electronic
solutions really solve the issues they are designed for and discuss
how questions of data protection are being handled. And finally:
How much of the overall spiritual experience is lost by these
technical implementations?