The Digital Explorers Society (DEX) was created in the late 1990s to take early digital tools like cameras, laptops, and modems into wild places to explore and share experiences online. In 1999, DEX held their first expedition, taking a curriculum about cave communications to classrooms who created "cave art" drawings that were projected on the walls of Carlsbad Caverns and photographed to share online, believed to be the first live web broadcast from underground. The expedition required cooperation between schools, agencies, and manufacturers who donated vehicles and equipment, as digital tools then filled cars rather than fitting in pockets as today.

1. Technology Unplugged 1995
Digital Explorers go underground
Carlsbad Caverns DEXpedition

2. The Digital Explorers Society (DEX) was
created in the late 1990’s by Robert
Lindstrom, Douglas Filter, and other
technologists/outdoorsmen to take digital
tools, such as digital cameras, laptop
computers, portable modems and other
technology to explore and share experiences
in wild places. Pioneering early and primitive
tools, the members of the society found ways
to move images to the web and share
experiences with others.

3. 1999 Today
Today’s smartphones contain all of the tools, apps, power and connectivity
to connect from nearly anywhere, to take high resolution photos and videos
and instantly send them anywhere in the world. Commonplace websites
share images and impressions. When the DEX was first started, however,
the tools and equipment necessary to complete those connections
sometimes filled up the trunk of a small car, and many of the websites
necessary to share them were coded from HTML by the innovators at DEX.
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4. The Carlsbad Caverns Expedition (DEXpedition) was the first joint effort
to take a curriculum about cave communications to classrooms in
California, Colorado and New Mexico, have students create their own
‘cave art’, and then take those images down below ground to project
onto cave walls, photograph them in the natural elements and then
paint them on the walls of the World Wide Web for classmates, families
and all interested parties to enjoy. We believe that it was the first live
web broadcast from 750 feet below ground.

5. Several hundred original
children’s drawings were
transformed when they were
projected on the cavern
walls.
And the students realized
what it felt like to leave
images on historic walls for
future digital archeologists

6. This DEXpedition was
made possible by
cooperation between
several schools,
government agencies;
manufacturers who
donated the use of
vehicles, cameras,
computers and projectors,
and the volunteer
innovators and early
adaptors who wanted to
stretch the limits of digital
tools outdoors.