The Great IT Paradox: The Problem and the Promise for Deafblind People
Return to Blindness and Visual Impairment
Presentation given at Deafblind Horizons series of events for the 50th Anniversary of Sense
Date: 19/06/2005
Venue: Latimer Conference Centre, Buckinghamshire, UK
Article
Abstract: Everybody knows that the world of ICT is changing ever more rapidly; new technologies emerge and the amount of information available is exploding; within ten years we will all have masses of broadcasting on broad band so that the world of the internet and the world of mass entertainment will merge. For sensory impaired people in general and deafblind people in particular, the amount of change and new information presents problems and promise; The problems are associated with having to get used to new equipment and having to find our way round new data systems; the promise lies in search tools which will help systems which will learn what we want and deliver it to us. People will still want room to be surprised but they will be sure of getting what they really need.
Everybody knows that the world of information and communications technology is changing. The thing that engineers, scientists, Government Ministers and 'serious people' most often talk about is the development of computing. From being a preserve of the military and academia it is now a feature of all our offices and more than half of our homes. Surprisingly, the jury is out on how much this has really affected our productivity. We are doing much more work, we are inputting a load more stuff; and more stuff is coming out, too, but its value is questionable. Alongside what is called 'political correctness' there is more than a hint of computational correctness, of doing certain things because they are done. A good example of this is the massive increase in Government consultation because the internet makes this possible but there's no evidence this is having an effect on policy.
I spend my time thinking much more about broadcasting and telephones because this is the area that interests all of the population rather than computing which interests about half of it. Within a decade we have achieved mobile phone penetration of around 85% and the capacity of these phones is expanding rapidly so that they are merging with things called Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's); so that we can pop a small computer containing a phone into a suit pocket or handbag; text messaging and email from phones is becoming more common; and this year will be the first in history when more cameras are made by phone companies than camera companies.
As for television, we only have to turn on a Sky service to see how many channels we now have, at the last count on mine there were about 400; and even the 30 channels of Freeview are becoming a common feature. It isn't that we are watching more television but that we have far more choice.
I just want to make a few more general points about the technology before we go on to the heart of our concern, the prospects for deafblind people. You will hear the word "Convergence" used quite widely. This not only refers to the way in which televisions, telephones and computers are slowly evolving into one system, this also refers to the way that the information provided is converging; soon we will have television on the internet and the internet in our televisions; and before long 4g phones will be receiving every kind of data from the internet. This means that the consumer electronics boom will come to an end. Think of it; many people currently have more than one television and radio, a computer or two, a phone or two, a game boy, a walkman and an MP3 player. Soon it will all be in one box about the size of a current standard mobile phone.
However, and this is the really good bit, because we will no long be buying loads of electronic equipment because we only need this single processor box, we will be able to spend a lot more money on the thing engineers call the user interface, the thing that helps us to drive the system, the keys and the knobs and switches which together make a controller. Because these bits of controller technology will not be physically integrated or even connected by cables with the processor and monitor but will transmit to each other by wireless (you may have heard of Bluetooth), we will have much more flexibility. So if we have the controller technology we can really use well, it will be able to talk to any processor and be reflected in any monitor. This has two vital consequences for deafblind people: first, the controller we have come to love will be able to access a whole host of processors; secondly, those processors will not only be in the guts of computers, they will be the kind of information systems that show railway information at stations and store directories. Our view of the world through our own controller will be much smoother than at present when our access devices are either integrated into a processor or are limited in the things they can communicate with.
There is a mirror image to this advantage because our equivalent of a monitor, a braille display, for example, will be able to have cable free access to a whole host of systems; we are used to having our controller and monitor in one braille device but I am describing it in two processes because that is how most people will have to think of it. The reason for this big split, which will affect those with a little vision, is that we will be able to carry our own folding screen that is far larger than the standard screen on a telephone and far easier to access than a public screen in a railway station. In summary, the way we instruct processors and receive what they say will be much more personal and flexible. For a deafblind person this might mean keying in SMS text or qwerty text from a folding keyboard and having a braille display or tablet about the size of a packet of butter. For all disabled people but for deafblind people in particular, this will vastly expand the range of opportunities for leisure, work, learning and fun because we will only have to carry the controller and monitor that we are comfortable with; but even if you like your own processor the whole lot will be easier to carry and use.
But of course all this technology is only as good as the information we can get; and the amount of information we can get is exploding. The biggest library in the world is the American Library of Congress and now the basic unit of information measurement is the LOC or Library of Congress. 20 years ago there was this physical library in Washington; five years ago there was one LOC on the whole global internet; now there are seven or eight and that is before we begin to think about television and the transmission of movies on the internet. As the amount of 'new' knowledge or digitised knowledge dwarfs the old analogue knowledge in books and on LPs and celluloid film, only antiquarians will be interested in analogue things for their own sake. By 2010 all the major information sources in the world will be digitised.
Here is one note of warning. We will have to get used to the idea of comparative disadvantage. As the world has unlimited access to unlimited pictures, there are aspects of the way we live that will become more visual. What this means is that although our access to information will improve, the gap between what we can get and what other people can get will widen; we will suffer from comparative disadvantage and that gap will widen, just in the way that it did for deaf people with radio and for blind people with television. I just want us to recognise that but not be phased by it; what we have to concentrate on is our absolute advantage, rather than our comparative disadvantage, what we can find for ourselves which will improve our lives.
For all disabled people but for deafblind people in particular, this rapidly changing situation presents us with problems and possibilities. Let's deal with the problems first so that we can end on a cheerful note. The most obvious one is buying and getting used to new kit. As I have said, as time goes by we will be able to enjoy highly personalised controllers which will reach all data sources but that does not mean that we won't have problems on the way; and, in any case, it's not helpful to think of this as a journey with an end; technology will not stop changing. So we have a problem with price and familiarity when thinking about kit. There is also a familiarity factor when we think about the information we are trying to find. Some people, for example, could find five channels on their old television set but can't find one channel on a digital set; so although they are theoretically better off, in practice they are worse off. And, of course, the internet is not a well structured empire, it's a mass of uncoordinated individual efforts. So every time we go on to a new web site we have to put ourselves into the head of the designer and try to work out how his mind works, if it works at all.
So the core problem, really, is finding what we need. For deafblind people this is critical because we don't want to spend masses of time searching without finding what we really need; life is quite hard enough without that.
So let me show you what I think is going to happen. I will start with a simple example.
I am deeply in love with Samantha, so in love that we run something of a risk by sending each other email at the office. My office email system is very clever. It learns from my behaviour what I think is most important; so because I always answer Samantha's emails before I deal with those from my boss, the computer puts Samantha's emails at the top of my in-box, followed by the stuff from my boss. It then ranks all the rest in order, based on how it knows, from past experience, I will handle it. If I reply quickly to one source and slowly to another, the first will be ranked higher than the second.
Then, one day when my plans suddenly change, quite by accident I am walking down the street and see Samantha holding hands with another man. I am shattered. I go back to the office and send her a bland email and she replies quickly. But I am suspicious, and read the signs and it's soon clear that she has lost interest in me. So her emails are less frequent and I take longer to answer them; so my computer relegates them in my in-box. Then I meet Jackie, who is just stunning, and before you know where you are, Jackie's emails are at the top of my inbox and Samantha's are at the bottom.
Now that's a simple system that ranks inbound emails according to our behaviour; but new information systems can do that in a host of ways; so what we have here are systems that learn from our behaviour. A system can learn from our post code, so very soon we will be able to get bus timetables that are delivered to us from our point of view. You are probably already aware of how "favourites' work; if you like a web site you can tell a computer that it is a favourite of yours; but soon it will know without you telling it. Technology is also on the horizon that will learn at what level of complexity we want our information delivered; this will be quite sophisticated, so if you are a world expert on civil rights but a novice on housing benefit, it will soon learn to deliver your civil rights material from the most erudite sources but it will look for simple explanations of Housing Benefit. As you get better at Housing Benefit it will slowly raise the level of complexity in the documents it provides.
In a world of exploding information it is vital that all of us do not waste time, so the use of what used to be called "intelligent agents" (strangely, I haven't heard this term for some years now) is vital; for deafblind people this ability to get what you want quickly is going to be a vital part of your lives.
Still, we all need room for accidents, for serendipity. So don't bind yourselves just to the things you know you need or think you need; it's part of the mission of human beings to find and fulfil new needs. So surfing is still going to be important for the human spirit.
Finally, I want to give a word of warning and I hope wisdom from an old friend of mine, Chris Yapp. Chris said that when a new technology comes out it is always hyped; then because it disappoints, it is knocked; then, at last, it finds its realistic, pre hype level. What I have told you today is as close as I can get to reality but things in a rapidly changing environment often don't turn out quite as we had hoped. A good rule is that it will happen more slowly than I say; but it will happen; and I would like to be a part of helping us to get ready.