Better Living through Software

Today my old colleague, Cliff Schmidt, came to Microsoft Research to talk about his current role as director of the Talking Book project.  He recently returned from Ghana, where they have been field-testing the first version of their hardware, which allows rural villagers to share audio versions of educational materials about health, agricultural techniques, and so on.

The project initially started with the goal of creating a low-cost tool for helping people learn to read.  The literacy rate across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Afghanistan is about 60% in urban areas, and as low as 10% in the target areas for this tool.  The goals for the project rapidly adapted to reality as they began researching in the field.  In some ways, the goals and the design became simpler, but also laser-focused on the needs of the villagers in a way that couldn’t really be achieved in any existing devices.

Here is a video interview with Cliff that has a demo.  During the demo today, I was impressed with the audio quality of the device and microphone, and the design of the software driving the interface.  Cliff talked about some of the user experience changes that had been made so far, supported by a very flexible underlying software architecture.

~

Learning about the evolution of the Talking Book reminded me of the Talking Signs project created by my good friend (and cabal organizer) William Loughborough.  Over the years, as we’ve discussed accessibility and semantic information exchange, he’s always provided a moderating pragmatism.  Geeks like to imagine systems built of RFID and GPS combined with always-on access to RDF, and things like this.  William would gently point out that directional infrared, as low-tech as it is, can be superior for many purposes.  William was the one who first helped me realize that cognitive disabilities and illiteracy are a form of accessibility challenge just like vision impairment or deafness.  Interestingly, Cliff has found that impaired vision is far more common in the developing world, and Talking Books need to be useful for people with these disabilities.

~

Lately I have been thinking a lot about literacy and accessibility, as I attempt to pass on great ideas to the next generation.  We run into these issues when we try to teach Shakespeare, Homer, or even Torah or Talmud to children.  Basic literacy is not enough.  And even if you can expand a kid’s vocabulary to the point of having a linguistic understanding of the text, there are many additional dimensions of “literacy” that are required to really appreciate and internalize these works.  All of these works require an ability to imagine and to participate in the works.

Perhaps this is why I’ve been fascinated with George MacDonald, who is considered by Madeline L’Engle and J.R.R. Tolkien to be the grandfather of the fantasy genre.  MacDonald’s stories are much like Homer or Shakespeare, in that he is a master of symbolism, imagery, and stories within stories.  His are the sort of stories which retain their power even if retold in different words.  In fact, MacDonald’s prose skills are not the best by any means, which makes it all the more remarkable that his tales are so powerful.

MacDonald’s stories were written in the late 1800’s, and are now public domain, so you can find them easily online.  However, they are not really accessible to children (or even most adults) today, because of the old style of English used.  I’ve recently worked on translating some of them into contemporary kid-friendly English, and they really don’t lose their appeal.

This, I think, is the power of the whole “fairy tale” genre.  Good fairy tales depend on the story line, and not on the authoring ability of the person recording the tale, or the literacy of the person receiving it.  Today The Guardian ran a story arguing that the whole “fairy tale” genre evolved as a result of the printing press, rather than as a result of oral tradition.  The article quotes George MacDonald a few times, and is worth a read.  One is reminded of Theseus’s line in Midsummer Night’s Dream:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Of course, the idea that “fairy tales” originated in 1550 is absurd, unless you take a hopelessly restrictive definition.  Homer himself was a master of the fairy tale, and even if you limit yourself to stories like Cinderella, you must admit that The Story of Sinuhe, written 4000 years ago, is of that genre.

In any case, it certainly was a big deal when talk became books, empowered by the printing press.  But now we have books that become talk.  Great works like the Quran and Homer’s epics were spread primarily by spoken word at first.  How might history have been different if these had been spread as talking books? 

~

This was one of the most fascinating things Cliff discovered in his research.  Cliff is primarily trying to expand access to practical information about basic survival needs.  But when given the chance to record their own content to these talking books, Cliff found that villagers would sometimes start recording folk stories.  At first glance, nothing could seem less practical than folk tales, but I believe this is actually very important – maybe the most important type of “book” that can be shared.  And the impulse of the villagers to share this content shows that they know it to be important.  The other information is undoubtedly important.  But perhaps we’ll find that the “talking book” does far more than just virally disseminate agricultural and how-to advice.  Perhaps we’ll see the local fairy tales evolve and disseminate to create deeper shared contextual meaning, and layers of culture from which even better things can grow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Life at Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.