freedom and independence are quite commonplace in adaptive products. The notion of freedombox is that working within their box, you obtain freedom. That notion isn't verry different from other adaptive technology companies and their propriotary products. Perhaps the organizers of saveserotech.org should have another patition to come up with a new name for the product, that is if their aim is to help the noble cause of innovative competition. My vote is to stay with system access and just use that name for everything. That is really what their product does. You plug it in to any computer without the use of anything stupid like authorization or video intersept and you can do a lot to many systems you don't primarily use. Btw, If youthink of freedom as associating only with freedomscientific, one could also make a point for the word scientific E.G. Boston Scientific, Scientific American, etc. Personally the only science experiments going on there have to do with us user-testing products. And some use of computer science. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "JFW List" <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 7:05 PM Subject: Freedom Box, a personal reaction
In the midst of all this energetic discussion about the FS suit against Serotek (I'm still wondering who thought that up), I just want to describe what my initial reaction was when I first saw some promotional notice about Freedom Box. I have a feeling it was a press release from that company, forwarded to the NFB GUI-Talk list by someone. A few years ago. When I opened the message and read it,I had two reactions. One was to wonder what a "freedom box" could possibly be. Before reading any product information, I developed the notion that it was probably just a PC, as a lot of people like to call their computer "the box," affectionately. But it was probably a PC that was deliberately configured and pre-loaded with some sort of adaptive software, most likely made by the company, whose name I didn't notice in those messages, or failed to remember. Maybe that isn't what the Freedom Box is, but that's what first occurred to me, and the first impression something like a brand name makes is very important, if you want to reach the targeted consumer. And so I thought, Hmmm. I wonder if their software is some sort of suite of blind and low vision adaptive technologies that are in competition with the FS product line. Wonder how good the stuff is? And then I thought, freedom from what? Freedom from the shackles of blindness without the assistive benefits of this product? Fine, if that's what they want to claim, but isn't that unattractively negative, to tell the potential blind customer that he or she is in bondage to low expectations about their own capabilities until they get a Freedom Box? That doesn't sound very positive. Then I thought, "why box?" Because "box" called to mind "boxed in," restrained. I never heard of a box, figurative or literal, that enabled or enhanced freedom-- but I sure did know about the familiar use of "box" as describing confinement, actually. Boxed in. Thrown in the box. Not able to think out of the box. So the product name, on its own, left me with too many questions and not very attracted, already. And in very quick order, I then thought, what a bad idea to name the thing "freedom" anything. In the adaptive tech arena, I immediately associate the word with FS, before anything else, in fact exclusively. This is how advertising works, by the way, for anyone who is thinking that it ought to be clear that one is a company and the other is a product. Names are used for the associations they immediately invoke, at a level that makes an end run around rational thinking. So, you hear "freedom," and if you' aren't thinking about fried potatoes and Bush in a bad mood about France, then you're thinking of FS. "Couldn't they have thought of something a little more original?" I thought? "I don't suppose many people will be confused and think the product is affiliated with FS, but then again,maybe they will. Because it's hard not to make the association with FS. At that point, I went on to read a paragraph or two about the product, but was so brought down by the foregoing thoughts, in other words, so unimpressed with the company that had thought that up for a product name, that I didn't remember much of what I read, and I never even noticed the name of a company called Serotek or whatever. In fact, until today, I had remembered this as a company named Freedom Box with a single product, which I continued to think was something like a custom built PC with a screen reader and a screen magnifier program, or something like that, possibly pre-registered with a special Internet provider. Which is all to say, I was scarcely surprised to learn that FS has filed this suit and is trying to get them to rename the product. Duhh, I'm thinking. Of course. What took FS this long?What were those people thinking in the first place? I just say all this in order to stop being so abstract and idealistic about who should sue whom and is it good for the adaptive tech users community and so forth? In other words, not strutting an opinion so much as confiding a personal reaction. My take on this is that to start with, that company could have done a *whole* lot better naming this product. It was, like really, really obvious. IMHO, yadda yadda. -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.comJFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxTo unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfwIf you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
