In the early 20^th century, it was observed that some Melanesian cultures would carry out rituals that would emulate Western technologies and behaviors, such as building runways and control towers out of wood and clay. They were doing this in the hope that material wealth, such as food, would be delivered to them. These odd rituals arose because they had previously observed cargo being delivered via Western planes and falsely concluded that it was the runway itself that summoned the cargo.

Nowadays, within programming, we use the terms cargo cult or cargo culting to broadly describe copying patterns and behaviors without fully understanding their true purpose and functionality. When programmers search for a solution online and copy and paste the first piece of code they find without consideration as to its reliability or safety, they are partaking in act of cargo culting, seeking to accomplish some task by utilizing code that appears to be responsible for it in some other context.

Cargo culting typically entails the following process:

1. The person is embedded in a slightly unfamiliar technical context
2. The person sees the effect they wish to emulate
3. The person copies code that appears to produce the desired effect

This act can occur both organizationally and technically. Programmers, sometimes tasked with tying together disparate technical dependencies that they have little expertise in, will often be left with no other option than to cargo cult. And organizations, often without time to consider all the fundamentals, will often end up cargo culting popular behaviors and processes from other organizations.