I got a kick out of this. Sadly, I also find a note of truth in this commentary.
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As a rehab teacher working to assist older blind and vision impaired folks to be more independent, I chuckle at some of the gadgets promising to make life easier for the blind.A client called just two days ago all in a dither. The Audible Liquid Leveler we gave him has quit beeping. Now he can't tell if his coffee cup is full. We reminded him that this was something we'd talked about at the time that he was so insistent on having the gadget. Now we see a talking coffee pot. I shudder to learn just what it will do to inhibit independence. Remember the "Good Old Days?" when we turned on the stove and sat a pot of water in a container shaped like a coffee pot with a little basket in which we had actually measured out some coffee and we waited for it to boil for several minutes and then poured ourselves a cup of delicious coffee, without using a beeping liquid leveler? I still use one. best darn coffee on Snow Creek Road. What next? a toaster that yells at me when my toast pops up? Maybe my shoes can holler , "left" and "right" so I get them on the proper feet. While there is certainly a need for audio clues to assist us in operating certain modern gadgets, the problem is that if we gather too many of them about us we will need a walk-in storage closet to hold them all. Then we will be constantly hunting for that pesky talking coffee grinder, or the beeping egg poacher. We won't be independent at all. We'll be held hostage by all the well intentioned chattering gadgets. I still enjoy the challenge of doing stuff for myself and keeping my tools noses out of my business as much as I can. Which reminds me, where the dickens did I put that talking gadget that is supposed to find all the stuff I've left laying around?Carl Jarvis ---------- _______________________________________________ acb-l mailing list acb-l@xxxxxxx http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-l
