Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Machine Stops
"Beware of first- hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of [the lecturers]. "First-hand ideas do not really exist. ... Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible
tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation."
-- E.M. Forester, "The Machine Stops"
That short story, published in 1909 in the Saturday Evening Post still vibrates with erie echoes of a future accurately predicted.
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
to read the whole story.
As I now read Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains" it's easy to write myself off as a luddite, but it's more complex than that.
An English instructor once told our class that he'd read "A Tale Of Two Cities" under the covers with a flashlight when he was seven. I remember reading Jane Eyere at aged nine.
But today, I can't hardly absorb anything with long descriptive paragraphs. Today I am as impatient as Vashti, the main character in the Forester story who waits fifteen seconds for her son to speak with her long-distance. "I really believe you enjoy dawdling.", she tells him.
I'm unsure whether my increased ability to rapidly shift attention from one task to the next is a plus. In "The Shallows" Carr spends several chapters analyzing how the internet was not the first paradigm shift that adjusted the way we work with time and attention. In analyzing the spread of literacy, he discusses both the gains and losses of the vanishing oral tradition.
I've always been fascinated by the ways in which the train changed rural America, and how the car drove the new culture even more. It's too easy to think either that enhanced multi-tasking is bringing us greater intelligence or that a more superficial view is turning minds to mush.
What really got me was joining Twitter and reading through what were mostly retweets; people passing on information that I might, but probably do not find interesting. It reminds me of Vashti, always in search of original ideas, while simultaneously abhoring their creation.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
An Open Letter to Blind Journalists Visiting CSUN
Every year, I eagerly await the reports from the CSUN convention floor. I follow Main Menu, Blind Bargains and assorted blogs.
And I am always disappointed. This is the major technology conference, and you make sacrifices in both time and financing to attend.
Yet, instead of sniffing out stories, you consistently report on information that marketers push in your face. I can always learn the newest features in JAWS by simply visiting the Freedom Scientific Website. I don't want to hear a report about some new-fangled vibrating tactile electronic graphics system that is now being tested at an obscure university in south Korea. And I don't care about the latest camera-based portable OCR reading device that costs two grand and is manufactured bhy Independence Solutions, a company nobody's heard of.
Instead, I want to know what phones other blind attendees are loving and which ones are giving them fits. I want to know if Adobe's presentation on its highly touted Digital Editions is finally an accessible platform or if the presentation was just nmore hype about improvements planned for the future. I want to know which screen readers or ebook devices were duelling this year, and especially which tasks the looser performed well on.
Step out of the sessions exclusively for the blind and visit something on ebook accessibility, learning disabilities or access to distance education. Talk with the many teachers who attend about their experiences serving our community.
Spend less of your time in the convention hall, and stop quoting the color brochures. Devote that time interviewing ordinary attendees, and find out what technology has disappointed them the last couple of years.
Get proactive and enlighten me with CSUN coverage I am unlikely to discover through other sources.
---
Sent this out to as many people as I could think of and got a few interesting replies.
Most complained that the $500 conference fee was a barrier, but to me it seems the interesting discussions are happening outside of the sessions. One person griped that the more over-funded some presenter was, the less likely his presentation was to have unique content.
And I am always disappointed. This is the major technology conference, and you make sacrifices in both time and financing to attend.
Yet, instead of sniffing out stories, you consistently report on information that marketers push in your face. I can always learn the newest features in JAWS by simply visiting the Freedom Scientific Website. I don't want to hear a report about some new-fangled vibrating tactile electronic graphics system that is now being tested at an obscure university in south Korea. And I don't care about the latest camera-based portable OCR reading device that costs two grand and is manufactured bhy Independence Solutions, a company nobody's heard of.
Instead, I want to know what phones other blind attendees are loving and which ones are giving them fits. I want to know if Adobe's presentation on its highly touted Digital Editions is finally an accessible platform or if the presentation was just nmore hype about improvements planned for the future. I want to know which screen readers or ebook devices were duelling this year, and especially which tasks the looser performed well on.
Step out of the sessions exclusively for the blind and visit something on ebook accessibility, learning disabilities or access to distance education. Talk with the many teachers who attend about their experiences serving our community.
Spend less of your time in the convention hall, and stop quoting the color brochures. Devote that time interviewing ordinary attendees, and find out what technology has disappointed them the last couple of years.
Get proactive and enlighten me with CSUN coverage I am unlikely to discover through other sources.
---
Reactions
Sent this out to as many people as I could think of and got a few interesting replies.
Most complained that the $500 conference fee was a barrier, but to me it seems the interesting discussions are happening outside of the sessions. One person griped that the more over-funded some presenter was, the less likely his presentation was to have unique content.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
An Open Letter To The Carroll Center For The Blind
ACB Radio this week is airing ACB Reports featuring a panel discussion on Distance Learning. Carrolltech is described, and Brian makes it sound so valuable. I particularly noticed how he wants to reach out to a wider group of blind users.
I've heard so many wonderful things about the instruction and have really wanted to take a class. However, when I go to the website, it looks like nothing has changed in three years. There is no mention for example of Office 2007. I, like many users am eager to take intermediate and advanced training in Word and Excel especially -- something that goes beyond the Basics offered with the JAWS Daisy training for Office.
For example, yesterday, I spent an hour trying to close the styles pane in Word 2007. Finally, I discovered I needed to press F6 to move between panes, then use CTRL-spacebar to call up the system menu for the pane that had focus and choose Close. A solid intermediate training could have saved me hours of exploration. It's fun to fool with new software, but frustrating when you need to get your work done! I'm eager to sign up for courses that make me more efficient!
carroltech's online newsletters stop at August 2005. The calendar of events is empty. The instructor-lead trainings cattegory is empty. The same training on accessing a library database from four years ago is still offered with no change.
Yet the site assures me that "Not a month goes by that a member of the Carroll Center Computer Training Services Department doesn't make a presentation...."
What gives! You are promoting Carroll tech heavily but not advertising anything new! Your main Carroll Center blog is filled with news about other vendors gizmos, devices that are often pricey and only for blind or visually impaired users. I think it's better to promote tools like Office that are used by both blind and sighted people. The more we promote "special" devices, the more we send the message that we have our own "special" tools and therefore don't require mainstreaming. If you really want universities to get serious about making distance learning accessible, avoid sending the message that vendors are fashioning so much special-purpose technology for us that we can cope even if the rest of the world ignores our need for access! If you really wish to reach a larger number of users, don't limit yourself to those who can afford a Braille notetaker that costs twice as much as my property taxes!
I'd like to see a blog entry about new and exciting courses offered at Carrolltech. How about a training with NVDA and FireFox -- both tools are free and closer to the mainstream than using some over-priced mobile manager for the blind! How about a seminar on choosing wisely from the proliferation of cheap netbooks now available. This would have more value than a seminar on using the latest blindness gadget!
How about training on how to evaluate whether call center software is accessible? So many blind people apply to work in telephone customer service, and need to quickly evaluate if they will be able to use the software or what to do if they cannot.
What about a seminar on developing and maintaining web pages using software -- which choices are accessible, and is Word a good solution for web page creation? How about a class on using Excel to maintain personal databases, replacing the old paper roladexes we used to depend on. (Excel training tends to walk through the menus, rather than think about the real-world tasks we users want to accomplish. Web design training for the blind gets bogged down in all the elements of HTML rather than discussing how to select software that will create HTML for you.)
How about some advanced training on efficiently navigating unfamiliar websites with screen access, getting through tons of email quickly or how in general to master a new application with a minimum of wasted time! How about a panel discussion with blind people who got themselves promoted at work and how they conquered challenges and overcame prejudices. How about guidelines for selecting virus and malware removal software -- what works with screen access and what does not? How about a seminar on finding websites that will help consumers solve their own PC problems. How about training on the new VoiceOver, running on the $700 Mac mini? How about Linux -- isn't one of your web developers also an Orca developer? There are ever so many practical mainstream oriented topics you could blog about and/or train us on! So think out of the box, why don't you!
It's tempting to do blogs and seminars repeating the commercial hype, but Freedom Scientific, GWMicro, Dolphin, Humanware, Sendero and Serotekk are already promoting their products fine; do they really need help from your center?
Many of us blind professionals can easily afford $100 for training, so I wish you'd spend more time selling us your own stuff rather than promoting products designed by companies who already have a PR department. As a non-proffit, I'd like to see your mission become more enabling than simply commercializing these over-touted expensive items!
I've heard so many wonderful things about the instruction and have really wanted to take a class. However, when I go to the website, it looks like nothing has changed in three years. There is no mention for example of Office 2007. I, like many users am eager to take intermediate and advanced training in Word and Excel especially -- something that goes beyond the Basics offered with the JAWS Daisy training for Office.
For example, yesterday, I spent an hour trying to close the styles pane in Word 2007. Finally, I discovered I needed to press F6 to move between panes, then use CTRL-spacebar to call up the system menu for the pane that had focus and choose Close. A solid intermediate training could have saved me hours of exploration. It's fun to fool with new software, but frustrating when you need to get your work done! I'm eager to sign up for courses that make me more efficient!
carroltech's online newsletters stop at August 2005. The calendar of events is empty. The instructor-lead trainings cattegory is empty. The same training on accessing a library database from four years ago is still offered with no change.
Yet the site assures me that "Not a month goes by that a member of the Carroll Center Computer Training Services Department doesn't make a presentation...."
What gives! You are promoting Carroll tech heavily but not advertising anything new! Your main Carroll Center blog is filled with news about other vendors gizmos, devices that are often pricey and only for blind or visually impaired users. I think it's better to promote tools like Office that are used by both blind and sighted people. The more we promote "special" devices, the more we send the message that we have our own "special" tools and therefore don't require mainstreaming. If you really want universities to get serious about making distance learning accessible, avoid sending the message that vendors are fashioning so much special-purpose technology for us that we can cope even if the rest of the world ignores our need for access! If you really wish to reach a larger number of users, don't limit yourself to those who can afford a Braille notetaker that costs twice as much as my property taxes!
I'd like to see a blog entry about new and exciting courses offered at Carrolltech. How about a training with NVDA and FireFox -- both tools are free and closer to the mainstream than using some over-priced mobile manager for the blind! How about a seminar on choosing wisely from the proliferation of cheap netbooks now available. This would have more value than a seminar on using the latest blindness gadget!
How about training on how to evaluate whether call center software is accessible? So many blind people apply to work in telephone customer service, and need to quickly evaluate if they will be able to use the software or what to do if they cannot.
What about a seminar on developing and maintaining web pages using software -- which choices are accessible, and is Word a good solution for web page creation? How about a class on using Excel to maintain personal databases, replacing the old paper roladexes we used to depend on. (Excel training tends to walk through the menus, rather than think about the real-world tasks we users want to accomplish. Web design training for the blind gets bogged down in all the elements of HTML rather than discussing how to select software that will create HTML for you.)
How about some advanced training on efficiently navigating unfamiliar websites with screen access, getting through tons of email quickly or how in general to master a new application with a minimum of wasted time! How about a panel discussion with blind people who got themselves promoted at work and how they conquered challenges and overcame prejudices. How about guidelines for selecting virus and malware removal software -- what works with screen access and what does not? How about a seminar on finding websites that will help consumers solve their own PC problems. How about training on the new VoiceOver, running on the $700 Mac mini? How about Linux -- isn't one of your web developers also an Orca developer? There are ever so many practical mainstream oriented topics you could blog about and/or train us on! So think out of the box, why don't you!
It's tempting to do blogs and seminars repeating the commercial hype, but Freedom Scientific, GWMicro, Dolphin, Humanware, Sendero and Serotekk are already promoting their products fine; do they really need help from your center?
Many of us blind professionals can easily afford $100 for training, so I wish you'd spend more time selling us your own stuff rather than promoting products designed by companies who already have a PR department. As a non-proffit, I'd like to see your mission become more enabling than simply commercializing these over-touted expensive items!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Access Technology in the Ivory Tower
When I was younger, computing used to be a whole lot more fun. Of course, when you have a job, with deadlines, bosses and responsibilities, the fun quotient goes down significantly.
So why is it that today's modern access technology products often don't play nice with each other? It's especially unexcusable when the gladiators are from the same company.
I got two new computers last week. I'd been waiting for seven years for new computers -- college budgets being what they are nowadays -- and I can't tell you happy I was to get these core 2 duo babies. They're identical with 150GB hard drives and 2GB of RAM.
I produce alternate media and serve around 80 students per quarter. That's quarter, not semester! I'm a one-woman department, and when I get a student's book, I have to boogey to scan, OCR, format, and burn the thing to CD. I do have a high-speed scanner to help; it can gobble 90 pages per minute according to its specs.
I produce Braille, MP3, Daisy, Kurzweil, PDF and text files. I also do various versions of Office, MS Works, even OpenBook Ruby. I'm proud to be able to handle most any format a student requests.
But since my old computer had recently crashed, I'd been running around campus like a headless chicken trying to catch up on my work using lab computers that disabled students normally use. Tired of setting the LSHOSTS environment variable, not to mention hauling a backpack full of books around, I was glad enough to have my shiny new Dell machines installed in my office.
After I got JAWS working, and updated Windows (which takes forteen forevers itself!) I had a line of students eager for me to make their request first. So I had to install K1000. Got that working and patched and registered and happy. Scanned a few books, got a few MP3 texts finished, and I realized I was going to need K3000.
I like K3000 primarily for its automator. K1000 has an automator as well, but it's less convenient for me to operate because I have to create a special no-speech settings file for K1000. Also sometimes a student complains that the image isn't right if I OCR a book in K1000, even though their formats are supposed to be compatible. Being kind of in a rush, I figured I'd quickly install K3000, run a pile of tiffs through the automator and try my best to get caught up before students started complaining to my boss about my inefficiency!
And now, of course, neither product is working. I get a C++ runtime library crash with Version 10 of K3000, and I get a "fine objects unhandled internal error" crash with Ver 11 of k1000. I vaguely remember something about you needing to install the latest Kurzweil product last, and I probably should've done it.
But wait, isn't this a more enlightened age. Don't both K3000 and K1000 belong to the same company? Can't these programmers all meet together and get this compatibility thing figured out once and for all?
What peeves me is that these companies, and Kesi isn't the only one for sure, are so busy adding features and improvements that they never go back to fix that which has been broken for a long long time. Don't they realize that people who work with access technology use several products? Don't they realize that learning disabled instructors might teach blind students and that visually impaired students might be receiving services from a blind staffer? It seems to me that making your product play nice with a variety of other AT products, and a variety of versions of those products should be high on the priority list for all designers of access technology!
So now, I'm more behind than even before. Why am I wasting time ranting to this blog? Because I'm virus scanning and malware scanning before I re-install anything, and also I want to schmooze with Nick in tech support whose line is busy at the moment. Being hyper-efficient, I of course installed and registered K3000 on both machines, meaning I probably have to uninstall both products twice, re-install, re-register, and re-patch! No wonder my students think I spend my day goofing off!
So why is it that today's modern access technology products often don't play nice with each other? It's especially unexcusable when the gladiators are from the same company.
I got two new computers last week. I'd been waiting for seven years for new computers -- college budgets being what they are nowadays -- and I can't tell you happy I was to get these core 2 duo babies. They're identical with 150GB hard drives and 2GB of RAM.
I produce alternate media and serve around 80 students per quarter. That's quarter, not semester! I'm a one-woman department, and when I get a student's book, I have to boogey to scan, OCR, format, and burn the thing to CD. I do have a high-speed scanner to help; it can gobble 90 pages per minute according to its specs.
I produce Braille, MP3, Daisy, Kurzweil, PDF and text files. I also do various versions of Office, MS Works, even OpenBook Ruby. I'm proud to be able to handle most any format a student requests.
But since my old computer had recently crashed, I'd been running around campus like a headless chicken trying to catch up on my work using lab computers that disabled students normally use. Tired of setting the LSHOSTS environment variable, not to mention hauling a backpack full of books around, I was glad enough to have my shiny new Dell machines installed in my office.
After I got JAWS working, and updated Windows (which takes forteen forevers itself!) I had a line of students eager for me to make their request first. So I had to install K1000. Got that working and patched and registered and happy. Scanned a few books, got a few MP3 texts finished, and I realized I was going to need K3000.
I like K3000 primarily for its automator. K1000 has an automator as well, but it's less convenient for me to operate because I have to create a special no-speech settings file for K1000. Also sometimes a student complains that the image isn't right if I OCR a book in K1000, even though their formats are supposed to be compatible. Being kind of in a rush, I figured I'd quickly install K3000, run a pile of tiffs through the automator and try my best to get caught up before students started complaining to my boss about my inefficiency!
And now, of course, neither product is working. I get a C++ runtime library crash with Version 10 of K3000, and I get a "fine objects unhandled internal error" crash with Ver 11 of k1000. I vaguely remember something about you needing to install the latest Kurzweil product last, and I probably should've done it.
But wait, isn't this a more enlightened age. Don't both K3000 and K1000 belong to the same company? Can't these programmers all meet together and get this compatibility thing figured out once and for all?
What peeves me is that these companies, and Kesi isn't the only one for sure, are so busy adding features and improvements that they never go back to fix that which has been broken for a long long time. Don't they realize that people who work with access technology use several products? Don't they realize that learning disabled instructors might teach blind students and that visually impaired students might be receiving services from a blind staffer? It seems to me that making your product play nice with a variety of other AT products, and a variety of versions of those products should be high on the priority list for all designers of access technology!
So now, I'm more behind than even before. Why am I wasting time ranting to this blog? Because I'm virus scanning and malware scanning before I re-install anything, and also I want to schmooze with Nick in tech support whose line is busy at the moment. Being hyper-efficient, I of course installed and registered K3000 on both machines, meaning I probably have to uninstall both products twice, re-install, re-register, and re-patch! No wonder my students think I spend my day goofing off!
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