Author: Subir

Meeting #4 with the Insight Group: Notes

Subir / / Ilias Project

Experiences in food

One of the main themes of this discussion was to relate and understand personal experiences of Blind and Visually Impaired persons in the human experience of having and making food.

Observations/notes:

  1. Problems faced while cooking in the kitchen
    1. How to measure sugar or ingredients other than touching? Touching is unhigenic, hands are wet and so on.
    2. How to know when the glass or the pan is full while pouring liquids, for example milk in a glass?
    3. Pouring liquids, how to know where are the utensil’s positioning, so that liquid falls into the utensil?
    4. With liquids like milk or milk based – tea/coffee, the liquid sticks to the cup unless there is a spout. It is difficult even for sighted people (like Subir), so obviously its one of the difficult aspects of Insight members when they wish to make themselves a cup of coffee/tea.
    5. Liquid always spills for some members, no matter how careful they are.
    6. Filling bottles seemed to be easier as the bottle emitted a changing sound signature that helped get how much it was full. Also having a narrow mouth helped to pour contents into and out of it.
    7. Some members prefer utensils with handles, so that they don’t get burns while handling them. Some are forced to use utensils with no handles, and a set of pliers.
    8. Sanket says, when he’s cooking he does not want anyone to come into the kitchen. Because of the risk of messing up the memory map of utensils, devices, ingredients, etc. This is often observed in other areas too – people who use memory to access items Vs. people who use visual discovery. And this is also true for me, who is a sighted person!
    9. Sanket’s experience says that when cooking in oil, experiencing flashes of oil/water on to the face is a daily thing. This was also seconded by others. He recommends a face shield to prevent burns. Probable reason is that since smell is such an important sense in this case, one tries to get closer to the hot pan and so on… Needs to be discovered more.
    10. It seems as compared to vegetables, non-veg is easier to cook. This is probably because non-veg food like chiken/mutton/fish are large chunks and have structure that is distinguishable as compared to vegetables which might trun soft on heating/cooking or otherwise are hard to distinguish.
    11. Bhendi seems to be difficult to cook, as there is little smell signature.
    12. A hot topic was how to clean/wash rice or vegetables? Rice was particularly difficult it seems, separating stones from rice was a question of concern for Neha. Sanket suggested an instrument that he used to rinse rice. What that instrument is, is unknown as of now.
    13. How to cut vegetables, tomatoes, onions? Again, Sanket – the most experienced cook in that meeting (even including a sighted person) described an instrument he uses that efficiently slices vegetables in the sizes he wants. What this is is still a mystery!
    14. Using knife could be a dangerous activity, as the sharp edge is hard to distinguish and the food to be cut is often to be held by the other hand. A mistake can be very hurting!
    15. Neha mentioned that everytime she tried to cook, getting burns was a common experience. This is the saddest revelation I of that meeting. Since there is no way to know, other than touching, as to what is hot and what is not, this experience seems so obvious.
    16. Also, some expressed need to cook by one’s own at times, so that to be with oneself or not to bother others for such essential act as getting food of one’s choice.
    17. Kshitij mentioned that he has become habituated to doing small things by bringing face close towards those things so that he can see clearly. This is unfortunately very difficult when he has to cut onions where the pungent smell and vapors hurt his eyes for long!
  2. Food types
    1. Food that can be eaten by hand is the best for members, probably because it can be felt by the fingers.
    2. Foods requiring cutlery is not so convenient.
    3. Foods, such as lasagna, which have multiple layers and have to be consumed in that order are also difficult.
    4. Ice-creams? — forgot to write about them 🙁
    5. Idli-samber seems to be very popular among the group. Idlis floating in Sambar! Neha reported finding idli pieces was tough.
  3. Eating in a restaurant
    1. In a restaurant, the lack of accessible menus is one of the biggest issues.
    2. When the waiter or someone reads the menu to them, its not so easy. The person would like to hear and pause for consideration or thoughts, or go back to a previous item. However this is not possible when hearing out other people.
    3. Most often, members of this group prefer to order what others are ordering. Social pressure, of standing out while ordering or taking time to order, could also be playing a major role in the unpleasant aspects of going to a restaurant.
    4. Often this may lead to going on to restaurants where the menu is already known.
    5. Some restaurants publish their menu online, or on food delivery apps through which they can be accessible to members of B/VI community. It is an ironic situation.

Entertainment and leisure activities

  1. Watching movies on Netflix with audio description of the scenes.
  2. Audibles
  3. Reading audio books
  4. Cycling – tandem cycling whenever possible.
  5. Swimming – this seems to be very much loved my some of the members.
    1. Problems with finding direction in water.
    2. Sanket and Neha mentioned that if the pool is crowded, then they don’t prefer to go into them, for the fear of bumping into others.
    3. Sanket mentioned he loved sea swimming, but there is an assistance boat required ahead of him so that he can get his directions in the water. For example when his head is above water he kind of hears out instructions on the directions or something like that, or listening to a boat’s engine ahead.
  6. Running – problems faced are potholes!

Miscellaneous

  1. Neha mentioned of a headache as she was listesning to this discussion. She mentioned that listening to more than an hour is not good for the ears – the only other sensation that B/VI members can depend on so much!
  2. Everyone agreed that alternative senses should be used to reduce over dependence on hearing.
  3. Some mentioned that key deliberately keep the phone away to avoid getting disturbed by phone calls, notifications, etc.
  4. On Braille:
    1. Sanket mentioned he likes to use Braille, but the books are too heavy in kilos as compared to regular books – just because the Braille typeset fonts have to be so big. Compare 60-70 characters/line in an A4 writing, vs. to 20 odd characters on an A4 printed Braille paper!
    2. Another problem was with significant learning curve for new users. This discouraged people from learning and using Braille.
    3. Neha wanted some method in which she could take down notes while listening on the ear phones. She also wanted to re-read what she had written without resorting to audio, which was already in use as in a call. A good Braille system could have helped here.
    4. Manasvi mentioned that in the US, there is huge emphasis on Braille, where as in India there is hardly any. She mentioned that much of the places she went to had Braille signs and expected Braille literacy.
  5. Kshitj mentioned problems faced with reading maths and other things. Suggested the use of Fresnel lens viewers for magnifying whole pages. These are also light weight and easy to carry. Expecting to learn about his experiences with such viewers.
  6. Since some members have a non-visual disability, it has a severe consequences socially. Its hard for identifying faces and responding to gestures- leading to an unintended social awkwardness and rift.

Technology ideas

  1. Can a watch be made that has the following features:
    1. Time communicated through touch senses, like Braille dots.
    2. Temperature of the object in front, measured through IR temperature sensors. similar to the ones used by doctors to measure body temperature on the forehead.
    3. A direction indicator to indicate north or important co-ordinates.
    4. An easy way to access calls, and other smartphone features without reaching out to the smartphone in the pocket.
  2. A spoon that gives a braille type indication of temperature of the object it is touching? it could also give an indication of the food quality, spicy, hot, salty, sweet, color, etc. A smart spoon!

Meeting #3 with the Insight Group: Notes

Subir / / Ilias Project

Experiences in education

The main theme of this discussion, held on 2nd August 2020, was to relate and understand personal experiences of Blind and Visually Impaired persons as they navigate through educational systems. Of course this is not exhaustive because of limited time available for the discussion.

Observations/notes:

  1. Access to written materials/books
    1. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech were often used by many of the members, and they hardly relied on the Braille system for interfacing with the knowledge sources (books).
    2. Audio books, ebooks, etc are available for many subjects. Google search seems to be the tool of choice.
    3. However not all physical books are available in audio format. And thus there is often this exclusion of materials.
    4. Text book or any physical book readers are accessible in the Pune university, but that is of not much help. Affordability of this technology is a big issue.
    5. Some papers are published in ‘protected view’ format that disallows right-clicking, copying, etc for the sake of implementing copyright and IP laws. Such sources are difficult to be accessible.
  2. Exams:
    1. In a school or college, responding with audio recordings seems to be an acceptable way of answering exam question.
    2. For board exams, scribes were used. Because hand written format is the only accessible one (I guess as of now?).
    3. Zainab gave examples of Bhavya Shah who is blind but studied and scored in CBSE class 10 exams.
    4. Also of Haroon Kareem, who wrote SSCL paper without using a scribe and using a computer. He got A+.
  3. General schooling:
    1. It was interesting to note that not everyone went to a special school with special teachers.
    2. Manasvi mentioned that an assistant was relied upon for describing the teacher’s black-board work into words. I wonder if all this had to be remembered on the spot, that it must be difficult to not have notes to refer to for later times?
    3. Due to our schooling system focusing on competitiveness, often the much needed mixed schooling experience is not available to the disability facing members. This needs to be explored and researched as to why this is so prevalent and what could be done to solve this.
    4. Due to severe paucity of non-visual learning materials, the progress of the disabled community in educational domains is severely compromized. The progress is often delayed by many years as compared to non-disabled people, leading to extended disabilities in future job prospects and so on.
    5. The lack of subject choices, due to limitation in mediums, makes one often choose textual intensive subjects such as in the humanities.
    6. Academia seems to be valuable choice for people with visual impairments, as it seems to provide a safe environment with more accessibility as compared to other avenues.
  4. Regarding subjects
    1. Mathematics
      1. The most difficult of subjects to follow.
      2. Math requires writing symbols, and reading them. It is a highly symbolic language, very abstract. Without a medium, reading, writing and doing math is impossible or at least very hard. Verbal languages can be spoken, but math exists on a symbolic platform.
      3. Manasvi mentioned she had to let go of maths from 5th standard.
      4. Zainab mentioned that math audio books are available till engineering graduation level.
      5. The overall group’s difficulty with math was pretty obvious.
      6. Neha, who developed visual impairments after completing her education, described that when she didn’t have visual impairments she didn’t quite like math, but now she does and misses doing math because of her visual impairments.
      7. Neha mentioned of someone who was taught math in school using papad!
    2. Maps and geography – being a heavily graphical subject, its obvious that it wont have many takers from the B/VI community.
    3. Sciences and its labs –
      1. Labs require experiments to be visually conducted, and thus are difficult for BVI students to follow.
      2. Sciences often heavily depend on visual inputs such as color, texture and images to convey their content. Hence these also are difficult to follow.
      3. Can science be done without the visual content? Because a lot of science is non-visual and abstract in nature! However, for the lack of an effective medium (alternatives to images, reading and writing), the content is hard to communicate.
    4. Field Visits – these probably bring on significant amount of uncertainties and non-familiarity in the environment and make things uncomfortable as a learning environment.
    5. Computer programming – All math done in computers is through simple english alphabets. Does an alphabet friendly math language exist, is it being practiced?
  5. Future
    1. According to everyone, tools and options that are currently available for continuing education are hardly known to people and families encountering disabilities for the first time.
    2. There seems to be a severe lack of teachers and institutional support system for child education as well as adult education.
    3. Doctors and teachers who are usually the first institutional responders to a family facing disability, must be essentially educated to available technologies and possibilities. These people are often the ones who hold much power to guide, help and support people with disabilities ease into the flow of society.
    4. A common suggestion from teachers in this group meeting was for developing content considering accessibility as inherently bound to the content. Or in other words – accessibility is designed into the content right from the word go.
    5. Vernacular language users often have a hard time because the technologies and books available use english alphabets as their basis.
    6. Zainab and Dr. Homiyar mentioned about requirement of a keyboard that can help fast typing and notes taking, but which is small enough to be attached to a smartphone and be carried around without added accommodation. The QWERTY keyboard is great for this, but can this be made fordable and compact? Keys need to be big enough to type easily.
  6. Technological prospects:
    1. Can a method be developed where non-visual reading and writing be possible without audio? Audio is great, but often sequential in nature, depends on silent surroundings and is not private. Such method must be able to help take notes, allow going back and forth between the written lines, editing them, scribble some images or shapes and re-read them as need be. It should also be able to convert these notes into audio format and digitize them for future access. It could be a parking space for thoughts, just like images and sketching does for visual thinkers. Can it be done??
    2. Some non-visual language needs to exist for easy math work. Can such things as geometry, algebra, etc be done in a non-visual way? Such ways, if they exist are too rare currently and require highly skilled teachers. The latter is difficult if there is no standardized procedure or method.
    3. A tactile screen could be desirable that can depict images that can be hand-felt and interpreted non-visually. Our touch faculties are amazing, and currently they are hardly used to compensate for visual shortcomings.
    4. Can touch intensive technologies be developed so that people with visual, audio and speech disabilities can access content through them?
    5. Smartphones are great, but different apps even if accessible individually, use their own styles of screens and buttons and options. Can a universal accessibility standard be developed for apps so that each app or service is uniform and similar to each other, thus being much easier for B/VI people to follow?

Meeting #2 with the Insight Group: Notes

Subir / / Ilias Project

This was mostly about navigation and mobility.

  1. Extended time to travel as compared to no impairment. Sometimes 2x or 3x times the normal.
  2. Everyone has a different travel story, travel times and so on.
  3. Going to shops that are crowded is difficult. While everything in the shop remains same, the number and movement of people becomes the unpredictable part.
  4. Steps are counted to keep in track of path, direction to known shops and places.
  5. Exchanging money
    1. Counting, verifying money notes is difficult.
    2. Digital payment is better.
    3. Division of note denominations in different parts of the wallet for easy repay.
    4. Quickness of exchange with reliability is missing.
    5. RBI has no consideration for B/VI users of its service. App provided by it isnt as great as other. However, natural note markings for universal accessible use was the responsibility of RBI designers. They have failed. (Q- why no laws or court cases were made to fight for this? Can this be done?)
  6. Things slow down, from travelling to any kind of mobility to work, due to visual impairment. So vision is related to the general speed of life. Unless tech or good laws and cultural awareness evolve.
  7. Technology discussed
    1. Jioglass
    2. Bluetooth Beacons for marking products in shops/malls and available on smartphone
    3. Explorer.ai – for autonomous checkouts at shops without any exchange of cash or card.
    4. Samsung phone with magnetic reader, where physical card swipe works as payment.
    5. Device for converting images into 3D prints that can be sensed by touch.
    6. JAWS screen reader?
    7. Picture-in-flash – http://piaf-tactile.com/
    8. Vernacular keyboards

New questions:

  1. What is the cost of technology to help make life comfortable for B/VI citizens of India?
  2. Which cities are the best for living in India?
  3. Is there an institute that researches disability technologies in India? Any contact with them?
  4. What professions are good for persons with visual impairments and blindness?

Meeting #1 with the Insight Group: Notes.

Subir / / Ilias Project

Participants – Ishan, Shweta, Manasvi, Zainab, Neha, Sanket, Aditya, Tanya, Rasika, Subir.

A summary of problems mentioned by the group –

  1. Public spaces –
    1. Navigation while walking –
      1. Exploration of immediate surroundings
      2. Broader established locations are available through map apps, but smaller areas are not. Especially in India where informal shops are plenty and the backbone of life – these are not on the map.
      3. Dynamic structures, tree falls, road block signs can come up at any hour and any day with no concern for the visually impaired.
      4. Vehicles parked on footpaths could be a major hurdle.
    2. Transport – how to know the bus number, destination and route? Often bus people are too busy and the bus stoppages are too short and hasty that BVI people may not get good answers as to
      their questions. Seating inside the bus may be difficult too.
    3. Traffic signals are only visual (wherever they are) with no audio indication of its states.
    4. Road crossing?
    5. Elevators
      1. do not have announcements of floors.
      2. Do not have physical buttons in modern elevators, they are touch screens.
    6. Cabs – when booked, often the local landmark is not relatable as map-apps may not have a relevant local landmark. Map-apps resolution and accuracy being very poor(~10m), they do not helpful locally. A BVI person has to make external visual cues to cab drivers so that they could be identified from far.
    7. Last mile connectivity is always an issue, the biggest issue.
    8. Restaurants or food at home – hard to get to the desired food, especially using tools such as spoons as spoons can not sense. Food is distributed over a plate, and the plate could be displaced while eating, creating a need for relocating the plate by hand senses.
  2. Obstacles on footpaths
    1. Dog poop or any other.
    2. Water/mud puddle.
    3. Surface roughness, potholes
    4. Vehicle prevention poles on footpaths
  3. Appliances – complicated remotes with no concern for accessibility.
    1. TV remote – one uses fixed number for accessing fixed channels.
    2. Washing machines – poor interface.
    3. AC – do not touch my remote!
    4. Microwave.
    5. Many smartphone enabled solutions but products must be company specific – for example LG may have a voice activated app that controls LG TVs, the same can control microwave ovens, etc. However if Samsung is another device maker, then another app has to be installed for it.
  4. Complaints against existing technologies for the BVI
    1. Smartphones are a great platform. Many good apps, but each is good for something and not good for all. So its very hard to keep so many apps and juggle between them. Ideally, 1 good app, that takes care of most of the requirements is necessary.
    2. Ultrasonics are not very accurate, and often overload the senses by creating additional challenges.
    3. Smartphone apps depend on the internet. When 3G-4G signal is not very good the whole system crumbles down and is dead weight.
  5. Suggestions from the group.
    1. Smartphones are great, but they would have been fantastic if a keyboard could be attached to them so all keys and navigation through it would be super stable and reliable.
    2. Blackberry smartphone is the best, because it had a fixed keyboard.
    3. Can traffic signals be converted into beeping, so that pedistrians know when to cross or not?
    4. Markings on the footpath give signals through the feet as to what lays ahead. This could be more standardized and popularized?
    5. For partially blind people, could digital glasses with variable contrast, magnification and brightness settings be used? These could just take the normal image in front and modify is as per needs of the user.
  6. Technologies worth looking into for new developers:
    1. BeMyEyes
    2. Google glasses
    3. Bose Wearables.
    4. Aftershockz Bone conduction headphone.
    5. Keyboards that can be attached to a smartphone
  7. Individual technological interests
    1. Shweta – online courses and education for BVI community ?
    2. ? Forgot other such avenues discussed from other members. – subir

New Questions:

  1. What is the perspective on privacy, as per personal experience?
  2. As a visually able person i use subconscious and conscious visual cues to judge strangers as amicable or otherwise, and facial expressions as feedback as to whether what i an saying or doing is going OK with the others or not. How does this body talk happen for BVI people?
  3. Hygiene, in personal spaces as well as in public, is a very visual sensory thing. For example, plates they received at the restaurants, tables, chair surfaces, in the washrooms, and so on. How do BVI people experience and feel about hygiene?
  4. What kind of work and worklife would you like to have? Have you found it? And what could be the tools, skills and social construct necessary to achieve that work-life situation around you? Where can technology plug in?
  5. As humans, we all need our escapades – avenues where we could shrug off our armour and thinking and self and just pleasantly absorb all good things without giving a thought – a space to be. Could you share your escapades, like movies, series, art, music? Do you practice or play – such as sculpture, clay work, pottery, painting, cooking, music making, etc?
  6. How do you navigate the smartphone interface?
  7. What is the relevance of Braille in today’s world? Do you wish to attach a Braille interface to a smartphone keyboard or is it no more a relevant concept?
  8. How do you deal with hard cash, when at counters and stuff? Is there a way to count them, feel them, judge the denomination, etc. is there a technology for that which you use?
  9. When you have to write, do you have to speak aloud to a mic? How about vernacular languages? Is there an app for Marathi, Hindi, Bangla, etc?
  10. Do you have an actual physical book reader that can read you anything that’s in front of your smartphone camera say?
  11. What are the feelings and thoughts when you meet strangers for the first time? Do you think face recognition will help?

What to tell to kids?

Subir / / Technology, Education & Society

Pre-session blues

I have been asked to talk to kids from 8th ,9th and 10th standard of a school (SNBP School, Morwadi, Pune). My friend Mrs. Sharmila Balan, who came up with this bright idea of making a bewildered engineer talk to young direction seeking kids, mentioned 1 objective for the talk :- Encourage and Inspire the kids. With those heavy targets and reflecting back at the clueless-ness of my own adventures in life, i am obviously much in a fix.

The problem is, i don’t know what the kids want to know. It is a class of 100 young minds, each with a sure shot uniqueness about them (unlike adults who are averaged out in life as years pass by). I wish i could have a discussion than a monologue in an actual class where i could see the faces of the kids! That would have been ideal.

Yet there must be common questions that a majority of these kids may be subscribing to in their own heads. Had i been in this similar situation as part of the sorry group of kids forced into a online webinar, here’s the kind of questions that would run through my mind:

  • Why am i supposed to sit and watch this stranger talk about strange and weird stuff that i have no clue about?
  • What are my friends thinking, lets check on whatsapp
  • Oooo ‘interesting’ people from the other class are also here!!
  • What should i eat?
  • How can i fool the world that i am actually fully aware and attending with utmost sincerity?
  • Hey look, bird fight on the window!!
  • How is this webinar relevant to:
    • What i like to do?
    • What excites me in my world?
    • If i am tech savvy, how does this talk relate to my interests in the fashions of my time – AI, big data, machine learning, robots, 3d printers, drones, space age, NASA, ISRO, military stuff, etc?
    • If i am not tech savvy, then how does it relate to the arts, philosophy, sciences and the curiosity of nature?
    • How about human mind?
    • How about social relationships, world politics, society as a whole?
    • Will this talk help me in finding my dream job?
    • What could be my dream job, that is a big question no one helps in answering!!
    • I know engineers, doctors, scientists and cooks (thanks Master Chef series), but i don’t know what they really mean, what they do (except in Master Chef).
    • I can’t decide what i will become? What will i be able to do?
    • How does this talk help me with my marks?
    • Everywhere i see, it is too hard. Too many people to compete against. I’m scared. I wish i knew a silent space with simple work that i can do and earn with with dignity and comfort.
    • i don’t understand why we study, what we study. Its not connecting with what i know i love, arts, sciences, technology, society and so on. I don’t know why? Or is it that i am too dumb and can’t make the obvious connections?
  • I have had enough, too many these digital things and classes! I want to get out, out there like i used to. I want to meet my friends and play and chill out. I want none of this adults telling kids what to or what not to do shit. I am out.
  • Oh this is going to be boring, like everything else. Lets see if this speaker makes a joke or something to excite me. Else i’ll just sleep over the talk or do other important things.
  • How is this relevant to COVID19 worries and tragedies?
  • How can i show off and impress my peers about my obvious smartness?

On the contrary, here’s what the adult real me worries about this talk:

  • Shit, what have i got into!
  • I have so many things to talk about, but i fear where to begin?
  • I fear about boring the shit out of young minds, and making another fool of myself (my specialty).
  • Should i talk about the love of making things by hand? Why we must do it? and so on?
  • Or should i talk about the perils of technology and how it is shaping the modern world towards ‘smartism’?
  • Should i discuss my favorite – how humans are coming to rely on, fast track evolve and enjoy techno-human systems, dangerously more than building trust between themselves? What is the changing nature of community thanks to the social technologies of the internet?
  • Or should i discuss what it closer to them rather than bother them with my interests?
  • Sharmila asked me to bring in the aspect of sustainability in the domain of technology and its development and consumption. That is a super interesting topic, but i am too naive and philosophical about it to begin with. How should i touch upon that?
  • I have only 1 hour, too many questions, too many unknowns and too less time. I wont also have any feedback from the kids, how will i know if i am speaking to closed minds (thanks to me) or getting along with them (being tolerated)?
  • What if the gods of the internet decide enough is enough? I should send in a backup presentation to them so if not the full wrath of the gods, i should at least be able to conduct an audio session from my end while others can present the slides.
  • I can tell them about my journey, but its hotch-potch. I can tell them why i do what i do, and so on. But is that what they wish to know?

Shweta, my friend, gave a good suggestion responding to my above distress – “You tell them what drives you, you don’t have to worry about whether the same thing will drive them or not”

So here’s what i made – in the shortest while.

makers-25July-2020

Post session reflections

It went OK i guess, but i had no real feedback. Sharmila called in to say it was great and the teachers found it interesting. But i wish i had more feedback. Here are some of my own criticisms:

  • Counter to expectations of an attractive and attention catching talk, this was dull. My slides were dull, without animation, images or videos.
  • I rushed through the content, but i guess in that short while i had to.
  • My examples were not rehearsed, and the flow was wavering a lot. That must have confused many people. Not a good sign of a potential teacher.
  • I stammered. That’s not interesting to any listener, unless its a discussion.
  • I made some sweeping generalizations, while missing out on practical stuff. For example, it would have been nice to have a good slide on projects they could make at home, etc.
  • I should have put captions on the images i showed of my work. Some explanation on the sides could have helped.
  • More videos of my work could have helped.
  • I could have concluded with some contact information on the ending slide.
  • Overall, my approach was too vague, a bit confused.
  • Technicalities were plenty, i didn’t know how to manage the presentation on one hand and see the viewer’s screen on the other. People kept joining in and i could not approve all of them as that would interrupt my flow (whatever it was).

Overall it went OK. But i am always skeptical. The teachers were very kind and seemed to be interested to work with students on vocational out-of syllabus learning. Lets see where this goes!

Special thanks to Sharmila Balan for giving me this opportunity to interact with her school and kids!

Globalization and social mass programming?

Subir / / Technology, Education & Society

I am not an avid watcher of films or TV or social media. Partly thanks to a nice internet connection and partly due to my self-restraint on spending money (sophisticated way to say i am cheap). I have very limited ‘entertainment’ escapades often focusing on news, standups, etc. I never noticed this social rife between me and the remaining mainstream society, until these COVID19 lockdown days.

2 observations:

  • I now realize why i don’t understand the society around me and why in return they don’t understand me. There is obviously a severe lack of common relatable content, as infotainment and entertainment forms a huge part of every ‘normal’ being.
  • When i began to give into the escapades of entertainment by binge watching “Friends” (in broken parts as i only have access to Youtube at 144p), i realized i was imitating the characters or using these characters as prototypes for people i know and interact with.

The latter is concerning. This is in no way new. I have often found myself mimicking people that i observe closely either with fascination or if working closely with. When i worked with my supervisor (Hervé Jeanmart) during the PhD days, i often found myself laughing in his style or inquiring about others in his style, with no intent of mockery. There could be many such habits i may have picked up from many people whom i admire or observe for one reason or the other. Isn’t it fascinating to extend this phenomenon? Is this how society learns a cultural language? Is this why people from a certain region speak and work and think similar? They are all imitating their peers!

Since i have remained so isolated from the society for so long, i probably have developed very unique weird habits that others can easily identify in me as different and unique, un-relatable and possibly even uncomfortable to have around! This difference is evident to me when i go into ‘civilized’ zones of someone’s home, or hang-out (try to, if allowed) among non-nerd friends. I am sure my peers could point out the rough edges in my social outline. I am a mis-fit.

So we see a spectrum here – the more people you are connected with, the more common you and your views are with subtle differences. And the same on the opposite end of the spectrum, the less you are connected with the more unique and weird your perspectives are. The two ends have a hard time meeting. The highly connected ‘mainstream’ folks must feel very comfortable, as everything around them is agreeable and according to dominant socio-cultural views. They have the crowd on their side! However they may also miss the basic human desire to be unique? Is this the basis of hierarchy – a scheme of differentiation within the commons? Poor and rich? Is it the ground for the idea of fashion – the agency for distinguishing from the crowded ‘other’ ?

What has social networking technology done to this mimicking nature of the human being? When i watch and laugh and react to the stories of 6 friends of a remote country, of a remote unconnected culture, i also learn to be like them. Or to use those characters as templates and stereotypes to understand my being here in my own locality and within my peers. Why we need to do this templating and stereotyping? Big question, i dont know. However, the point is, by participating (in a consumerist passive fashion) in a non-local culture thanks to technology, i become a local cultural outlier. When i meet someone with local cultural ethos, we are unable to relate to an extent we could have, had we been both fed on the same cultural food. No wonder when i write in english here, the many ideas and worries and concepts are alien to my local language medium and hence the local culture. So, network technology has been the force behind global culture, a culture that has lesser and lesser geographical relevance. At the most left with a local geographical flavor.

A similar investigation could be made into our education system, that caters to global cultural needs than local, often overpowering and neglecting local requirements. Imagine the kid of a farmer learning and knowing more about geopolitcal situations of the world rather than the potential rice disease threatening his family’s survival. Architectural designs aping ‘successful’ ideas in far distant regions and missing the point, like glass clad buildings in hot sunny India?

Also imagine what soap operas are doing to the masses? For example the ones found on Indian TV networks, like Tarek Mehta ka ulta chashma or Saas bhi kabhi ghar ki bahu thi. How are these popular programs shaping the constantly evolving culture? How do characters portrayed affect the daily lives of common people? I am sure, just like i am influenced by ‘Friends’, each one of us is influenced from TV series or movies. Acting out in imitation, at the cost of one’s own brain and its unique perspective, resulting in a significantly low cognitive load.

All these bind people to a great extent, creating a safe zone for commonality earlier created by religious texts, local specific practices and traditions. Common mass culture creates a safe zone, but now a days significantly displaced from the context of our physical lives. So many migrations are taking place at any moment within our minds, the gullible one.

Stereotyping Vs Prototyping

Subir / / Technology, Education & Society

We are in the information era. Everything and anything we see around triggers in us an association of vast proportions often linked with the memory of having seen its latest bits on a screen of some sort. A leaf for example, chances are that the image you recollect will be an image seen last on a computer/mobile screen than an actual living/dead leaf. Interesting when i did recollect it just now i recollected a vastly stereotyped image of a very ‘common’ leaf and in doing so skipped over the 1000s of leaves i have seen over in life, even neglecting the dead ones. If i slow down i may recollect how many varieties of leaves i have seen with my own eyes and even then i will be confused if the recollections were of real ones or virtual ones. Why is it that i recollected a certain image and not the others i wonder, more so why not the fact that i have seen so many i should have recollected all of them rather than just one. What is going on here?

Stereotyping is this wonderful thing we do – essentially strip off information that makes things unique and thus help classification. We do so probably to reduce our cognitive loads, because thinking is such a huge drain on our valuable lives on this earth. Probably if we didn’t have this classification skill set/ability, wonder what would have become of us? Imagine an ancient tribe on a hunting party, and it sees an animal in front. Now if this animal is new, no one would know anything about its behavior, whether its approachable and docile for hunting, if its meat is worthwhile the chase, are there chances we will loose one of us in chasing/hunting this animal and so on. There needs to be learning here through experimentation, through attempting to chase/hunt the animal, no other way to answer the questions. There are no precursors or precedents to follow – its new territory and full of risks, full of uncertainty. But once all the exploration is started and concluded to some extent, successfully or otherwise, the tribe would have gained a set of new knowledge. The next time the tribe encounters this ‘kind’ of animal, it wont be asking the very first set of questions again, the questions now will change according to the Q&A of the first experience. Soon enough this ‘kind’ of animal will get a name so that it’s easy to refer to in-between talks rather than describe each and every aspect of its behavior, meat quality, risk in hunting etc, every time this discussion comes up. As the tribes mature and get to interact more and more with the animal and its surroundings, more and more of the various properties of the animal are registered in the tribe’s collective idea of the world, more granularity in knowledge terms to say. The animal will be ‘classified’ by its name and all the new findings will be packaged under it. Its behaviors will be noted as being distinct to other animals which previously followed a similar classification procedure. A new library is created.

For some people concerned only as to how this animal is relevant to tribe’s or self’s survival the exploration will end there. This kind of animal if you encounter, do this and run the hell away or pray, whichever practical. Or go ahead and get it home for food (as a food, not to give it food as that may not go down well with the wife), or let it be and move on. The argument being, why further explore this costly avenue (cognitive workload) if there are other things to worry about. On the other hand there will be some who would desire to go beyond the immediate practical concerns. These visionaries would explore more, put more things under an ever evolving body of knowledge under the title of this animal. The more they explore, the more they realize they know so little. They discover that each animal is different in someways although similar in most ways, that the male and female behave differently, that there is something called a pack and some are in it and some prefer to stay out of it and so on. Serious lunatics, this sect of the tribe will be called by the practical minded, for obvious reasons (this sect got dignity now, called scientists/scholars). If the tribe encounters more and more of such animal, the practical section will get away with ‘stereotypical’ dealings about them, while the ‘scholars’ will keep a notebook and scribble as if each of the animal is unique. What is happening here is that the animal in question has created a divide within the tribe, a tension, while one section wants to move on after stereotyping the animal with simple characteristics, another section wants to setup tent and stay staring in the act of making further detailed prototypes of the animal. Isn’t this absolutely fascinating!

A note on education

Subir / / Technology, Education & Society

What should education be? i guess it should be first of all relevant to one’s local context. If i am not able to relate and engage with my local context in a studied and thoughtful manner, then what is the point, a stranger within my context? City people call village people who come to the cities as immature and frown upon them. Its correct, because the city life is not the context where they have been trained or thought much about! Similarly village people laugh at the oohhs and ouchs of city people when they go to the villages. Eventually, after staying in a new context we learn to adapt and intermingle into the new flow. This is self-education for adapting and survival. Often we come into a new setting and do not feel morally or intellectually aligned with the existing context. So we try to evolve a context better suited that will be apparently more helpful to the settings, this is self-education for leadership. Often we use ideas and thoughts and languages from others (books or people or digital media) to educate ourselves of our context. This probably forms the bulk of our self-education. But often we explore alone, we experiment and play with our surroundings and learn the hard way. We learn through failures and by reflection of actions and outcomes. This is self-education through experience. How much of the above can you consider as being felicitated by our schools and colleges?

Apart from the above contextual education, why do we need formal education in schools and colleges? Using education we come to know about the stories of different material, human and political worlds from a bird’s eye-view. We are able to place things and know why things are the way they are and how did that cup travel from the sand and clay mine in some distant place to the potter and then to the market and then to our table, even if we did not witness the actual process. Formal education is the short way to learn what pure-experience would have needed multiple lifetimes. This transferable and passed-on knowledge is referred to as ‘universal knowledge’ in Mathew B. Crawford’s book – Shop class as soulcraft. Universal because many people can at once have this kind of information and which may not be as unique as the people themselves.

Universal knowledge comes with its various peculiarities. Since it is universal, and hence too generalized, it’s not really contextual and can’t often be directly used to survive or to lead in very unique contexts. Also being universal pieces in unique minds, and the lack of real contextual testing as this kind of knowledge is too irrelevant, the only way to compare as to its quality of retention in the unique minds is to subject each one to universal tests. While some tests emphasize and ask for perfect rendition, others encourage some intermingling of various pieces of related universal knowledge with some sprinkling of contextual inputs. The former are what produces system-crackers – people who are good at cracking examination systems like competitive exams and so on. The latter are the hopeful lot.

But why should such distant, universal knowledge systems be so encouraged into our unique minds? For one, its super easy to do so! The effort to retain and hopefully understand these pieces of universal knowledge is also pattern-wise repetitive, and so there are many common and proven ways to do so – vocal repeating, repetitive writing, etc. It is similar to practicing a skill such as lathe turning, but only with minimal involvement of thinking and other senses. A lot of traditional knowledge systems use these methods. The other alternative of asking people to put in thought, get involved and so on takes simply more time, needs more dedication and also needs much more teaching inputs. Testing of such hybrid universal knowledge is also very difficult as now there could be as many unique responses as many students are there! This latter kind of education, though very rewarding intellectually, is not mass scale-able. So a majority of education in India is of the practical type – rote learning based. Another aspect of why this is so powerful and prevalent is because this is similar to how mass production systems work! Industrial requirements are of people who can handle the same kinds of universal machines (lathe for example) in the same way as prescribed by the lathe text book without adding in any self-flavor for the fear of producing non-uniform products (even if the non-uniformity is trumped by better quality). Also the outcomes of such mass manufacturing systems are easily consumed by the same universally tamed people (uniqueness died much early) who are gullible with one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. So the dulled mindset required for acquiring universal knowledge and reproducing it in perfect actually fits the mass manufacturing system in both ways, as good labor and as easily manipulable consumer. A win-win situation!

But the ease of retaining and playing with universal knowledge is also what makes it popular and manageable! What do we draw when asked to do a tree? In contrast, what do we draw when asked to draw a lamp pole? The image above kind of illustrates this point : a tree due to its uniqueness can be drawn in many ways, while a pole’s representation will almost be similar across drawings. Not only due to mass manufacture that a pole’s design is more or less fixed, but also because it is simple to comprehend and pass on. It does not have random branches and surface texture, or internal structure for that matter. It’s a predictable piece in the material world and also in our minds’ images. However, this is not true. Although its perception is simplified in our minds and languages and afar all poles look the same, each one is very different from the other irrespective of how top-notch the uniqueness-killing mass manufacturing processes are. Each pole has a slightly different surface finish, its structure has different lenghts and so on (the reason why engineers are forced to use tolerances). So the image above is a metaphor on how we like to see life and how it really is. It seems our understanding of the lives we live in is more driven by cognitive conveniences (the pole) rather than the immense breath and diversity of truth (the tree).

So how does it all relate to education? Because of the emphasis on universal knowledge, thanks to the mass manufacturing and mass consumer world we live in, we often turn out to be zombies with a tamed functioning in life – birth, schooling out the uniqueness of each one, averaging everyone to fall in line and compete with eachother over retention of universal knowledge, etc. For those who pass this mechanical zombie like ability, they enter mass manufacturing systems as laborers and consumers and live zombie-like lives in their well defined cages made with bars called conformity. These poor souls set the mainstream aspirations for those who could not fall in well into the retention and spit-it out game, and they feel equally zombie-like, forced to undervalue themselves and never get good avenues or vocabulary to understand or improve their lot. Education then becomes a pass to a certain fashion of life, and looses its real meaning.

Here’s another sketch of how things look on a graph. Experiential learning or 1st hand learning is slow and tedious, but provides the best quality of education – one that is very contextual and immediate to begin with. However it does not pass easily from one to one, takes years of apprentice training under masters of the art, and has less bearing outside the local sphere! This is mostly artisanship kind of labor (see previous blog post “Automation Vs. Artisanship“). But as one’s knowledge source goes farther from 1st hand experience, its quality looses out but its quantity and supply increase leading to easily acquisition and proliferation! Of course one gains a worldview and comprehension of things far beyond one’s immediate reach.

The outcomes of the brain-body-content one pursues predominantly decides on certain personal and professional outcomes, as listed above.

Innovation Vs Consumption: In my opinion, a laborer who does not exercise skills or engages with evolving skills can be termed as a consumer of the opportunity doled out by a higher power. Similar to the way we consume news without analyzing its content critically, or if we buy the material goods and pay no value or attention to what it’s role is and how to use it well and appropriately considering costs, environment and our personal greed Vs need demands. Whereas innovation appears in its natural form when we self-learn in the first hand mode. We explore the bounds of our understanding and senses, we dare to go beyond into the wild. This may not be innovation for the remaining world outside of the doer, but its innovation for the self. Without this, there is simply no way to innovate for the world.

Curiosity Vs Fear : When we involve in 1st hand exploration, we are driven more by innate human curiosity even if restrained by fear. Curiosity trumps fear of loosing or getting hurt, emotionally and physically. By fear i mean of the feelings we go through when we grapple with uncertainty. For example, when i finish attaching all wires and devices to a SmallDAC system (opensource PLC alternative that i developed) for the first time, there is a huge apprehension to connect the last wires. Often i am not able to mange it sanely, i take a walk, avoid working on the project for few hours, run away from it. Eventually the nagging thought of ‘what will work and what will light up lets see’ takes over and brings me back to the setup to do the rest and plug on the power. The 4-5 seconds after power is thrilling with my finger on the power button ready to shut it down, just in case smoke… The argument between curiosity and fear could always be there when something new is being done with awareness that things can go unpleasant.

Prototyping Vs. Stereotyping : Explained in details in another post here.

Experience Vs. gossip: TBD

So, the question is, what education do we want for ourselves and our kids?

Introduction to Illias Project

Subir / / Ilias Project
  • According to World Report on Vision (World Health Organization, 2019), atleast 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment.
  • Atleast 1 billion have vision impairment that can be addressed in some manner.
  • Every year, it costs global economy over US$ 3 trillion in lost productivity, health, and social care.


Of course, these statistics say nothing about the lived experiences of the people with blindness and visual impairment. It says nothing about the loss of their quality of life, their subjective experiences, and the influence of this condition on the way they find meaning in life.

We care about the individual, not just the vision impairment as a concept.

We seek to understand exactly what issues the individuals with conditions related to visual impairment are facing. We acknowledge that every individual with visual impairment has a unique experience of life, and faces unique issues. We acknowledge that other socio-economic, cultural, communal, and geographic factors also play a huge role in their lived experiences.

We care about using our skills to help individuals enhance their subjective experience of life. Through our work, we do not aim to solve all problems of all people with visual impairment around the world. We want to solve precisely those problems which can be solved with our skill-set. We want to address one or two issues faced by individuals with visual impairment. More importantly, we want to address issues of those individuals who do not currently have access to the already existing solutions.

We aim to create a technology-based solution. Our solution will have 3 major principles at its core:

  1. Individual centered technology: Acknowledging the individuality of experience.
  2. Low cost affordable technology: Creating access
  3. Technology that is actually practical and usable in real life.

There are a wide range of assistive technologies developed all around the world. I will be writing another blog post to give the overview of current existing technologies. However, for now, the major points to be noted are

  1. Most of the technologies are developed by academic research departments of universities around the world.
  2. Most technologies are in prototype stage and very few are commercially available.

Although, we began working on this project from the technological point of view, we have shifted our focus from understanding the shortcomings in the existing technologies to understanding the point of views of the individuals and then using technology to address these issues. This shift in our methodology is in line with the core values that underline this project, as discussed already.

Thus, currently, we are trying to understand the lived experiences reported by individuals all over the world, through interviews, case-studies, writings, and other mediums. The insights emerging from this kind of phenomenological study will form the basis of the technology that we are developing.

One of the major theme that has emerged is the strong desire felt by individuals to be independent. One of the most important factor which contributes to the feeling of dependence is the feeling of lack of mastery over the environment. Many individuals despise pity, have a strong desire to be treated normally, and even stronger desire to prove themselves. Sense of mastery over one’s environment leads to the feeling of self-confidence and autonomy. [efn_note]Trehan, K. (2018). Resilience among Adolescents with Visual Disabilities. Indian Journal of School Health & Wellbeing, 4(1), 53-62 [/efn_note]

Therefore, we are currently interested in developing technology which will lead to a better interaction between the individual and the environment. This technology ideally should equip the individual with a greater spatial understanding of the environment, overcoming the deficiency caused by the limited visual sense.

Sensory Substitution System: This technology converts information of one sense into stimulus of other sense. In this case, the idea is to convert visual information into acoustic or tactile stimulus. Using such a technology, the individual will be able to “hear” or “feel” that information which is generally percieved through sight.

While this idea seems exciting at a conceptual level, caution needs to be exercised when actual usability and functionality is considered. This project, though innovative to a certain degree, is certainly not meant to be a research experiment. It is meant to be practical in real world, and is meant to be useful to real individuals. So, the question that arises is simply: Is a Sensory Substitution System practical to be used and actually adding value to the life of the individuals?

And this is not the only problem with the general Sensory Substitution Systems. In one study [efn_note]Bakker, K., Steultjens, E., & Price, L. (2019). The lived experiences of adults with a visual impairment who experience fatigue when performing daily activities. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 82(8), 485-492.[/efn_note], individuals with blindness and visual impairment have reported that they experience mental fatigue not just during activities requiring vision, but also during activities which predominantly do not rely on vision. For instance, one individual reported that a simple conversation in a group leads to mental fatigue because of the effort and concentration it requires to isolate and keep track of the many members participating in the conversation. Another individual reported mental fatigue while playing music in an orchestra, because of the lack of reliance on vision to keep track of the other musicians. Sensory Substitution technology may increase the overload on the already taxed senses.

(On a side note, the way this fatigue is dealt with by these individuals is by alternating activities requiring high concentration with low-concentration activities. In other cases, by simply giving up or replacing fatiguing activities, like leaving the professional orchestra to playing music in old-age homes.)

One important point to note is that the acoustic and the tactile senses are themselves very different, and are relied upon in different ways. In my opinion, while acoustic sense is always ‘switched on’ and relied upon continuously, the tactile sense is generally relied upon consciously, when the individual chooses to use it. Therefore, it is possible that the tactile sense may be better suited than acoustic sense for the purpose of sensory substitution.

Our next objective is thus to build a simple tactile sensory substitution device prototype. More on that in the upcoming posts.

Automation Vs. Artisanship

Subir / / Technology, Education & Society

Will there always be some who will never get aid from the government, who will never have a job and social security for looking into the future? The role chronic insecurity plays in life can only be described by the ones facing it and their relations. So what is technology in this context? Big and worrying question. I don’t know. But being a technology developer here’s my moral reflection one of my own works.

Technology is a tool. A tool is one that achieves an end in a simpler way than previously available tools. Consider the case of SmallDAC control and automation system that i developed for a scientifically managed Jaggery processing plant. The client’s and plant owner’s requirement of automation can be summarized as such:

  • Sensing of various process parameters can help in better control to achieve better uniformity of the output jaggery.
  • Automation, based on sensed values, remove the need for human judgments, leading to better quality even when the humans involved are not jaggery making experts.
  • Since the process of jaggery making has been ‘de-skilled’ anyone can be replaced so the plant will have lesser dependability on labor and its related problems.

Every plant owner wants these things, tuned to their processes. These things can help achieve better outcomes in terms of regularity, ease of management (lesser people required and people with less authority of roles), quality of output as the machine is far more regular than what humans can ever achieve. A note here: a human who creates unique pieces of materials through labor and imagination and experience could be described as artist. A human who creates multiple pieces in alarming regularity and yet maintain functionality, may be the artisan. A machine replaces the artisan and has regularity and capacity built into it. Thus its obvious role is to replace a bunch of artisans.

Artisans, conventionally used in all jaggery plans and who would be replaced by such automation technologies of ‘scientific management’, are by nature demanding, need good salary and have ego. So management of such conventional plants need to consider and care about so many people’s nature and social aspects along with salary. Then comes the leaves, artisans being human fall sick, need personal leaves, and so on. They have families the need to tend to. Plant stops if a key artisan leaves, disgrunt from working conditions or ill-treatment by management or lack of adequate payment, etc – bad for the plant. Also many artisans are unmotivated, un-attentive leading to accidents, delays, etc. Artisans’ families also need to be cared about as many jaggery plants are near fields, away from residential areas. Artisan’s lack of hygiene may also have a huge impact on the quality of the product. Each of these factors can deteriorate the product, make potential customers loose trust and eventually make the plant operation uneconomical. So, the owner who invests money in constructing such a jaggery plant obviously wishes to eliminate the ‘labor problem’ through automation.

What are the outcomes of the automation, as seen from the human angle?

  • One obvious change is that earlier, in conventional plants, a workforce of 10-20 people were employed, in the automated plant it has been reduced to 4-5.
  • Since the plant does not demand much skills, the workers never become artisans even if they have worked long enough on the plant. There is no take-away for future job security.
  • Since plant operation is de-skilled, anyone not following the conveniences of the owner’s perspective becomes disposable and replaceable. This could lead to increased job insecurity among the workforce.

One counter-argument that i have heard many times is that the labors displaced have actually been liberated from the drudgery of working in appalling conditions and so now the persons are free to work and be absorbed in better work environments! I wonder if better work environments were available, wouldn’t one already be working there?

So the question is, what perspective to look through to this world of automation vs artisanship? Automation tries to eliminate the failures and flaws that come with humanness by replacing the humans in the process. It reduces human agency, as Mathew B. Crawford (author of Shop class as soulcraft) would put it. By making redundant the humans in the process, the company has more scientific chance to be profitable and tame in future. As for the humans replaced, they need to find work in conventional non-automated plants. However the market for conventional jaggery made in non-automated plants will decrease as products from the more hygienic scientifically managed (automated) plants with less human contact will be favored. For the humans retained due to their docile and non-revolting nature, their vulnerabilities might get exploited with the threat of firing. And this status wont change even after spending years on such an automated plant because one remains de-skilled in a plant designed to operated without skills. So one just becomes a mere dispensable end of a machine dominated process.

A similar movement towards automation and reducing human agency in our lives is occurring in the consumer technology world for long. Here’s a beautiful statement:

Its true, some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With its blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet doesn’t merely respond to this fact, it installs it, giving it the status of normalcy.

– Mathew B. Crawford, ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft’, Penguin Books, pg. 56.

In all these cases, economy and profit are pursued with scientific focus of optimization and predictability. All unpredictable things, be it humans or in many cases nature, then become the ‘other’, against whom the economy dominated actors are pitched. Do we fear that in distant future machines will enslave us? Maybe, its not so distant anymore. Maybe we are already seeing the enslavement. Only, its not machines, its systems. The head of which is composed of humans driven by contemporary socio-economic belief of growth at all cost, while the body being composed of machines that make lesser humans irrelevant.