Amazing: Speak to the hand

Huh.

It's one of those news stories that are not exactly biased, just rather clueless. It's a cool thing, kinda cute, but useful? Of all the things Andy said (I'm pretty sure I've seen some of his complaints about this) that's the least pertinent thing, and it's not that he is "annoyed" at the idea of turning ASL into speech. It's that it is barely functional, and where it functions, writing would do just as easily. ("Speak To The Hand -- an amazing new invention, called a 'pen', allows deaf people to write almost every single word in the English language to communicate with hearing people!")

It's one of those things that are fine in and of themselves and hopefully will pay off down the line, but are kinda whatever right now.

Wanna know what's really odd? I am almost sure that the idea came from apes.

Came from Crichton's "Congo" - I assume he got it from ape language researchers?

I don't think they did this. Dunno if they thought of it. Crichton was one who brought it into pop culture. I wonder if they are copying him.

'Twould be a very interesting thing if they were.

Soz - I do not quite understand your attitude to this.

If it could be really developed so that it worked well, would it not be much more useful, conversationally, than a pen?

For instance - conversing with deaf and hearing people in groups - would this not be a great thing? It is a major pain communicating by writing in such situations - as it is, actually, in most, where the people are physically present.

Hmmm - on second thought, it would allow hearing people to understand, but not be very useful for deaf people...hmmmm....

Dlowan, IF it gets to the point where it would help deaf and hearing people communicate in groups, that would be wonderful. I'm saying two things, though; the first is that it is far, far away from that right now.

The second is that for me, even if this worked perfectly this would do NOTHIN'. My problem is not with speech -- I speak fine. My problem is with hearing people who DON'T sign. So a speech-to-sign device (or some kind of portable voice-recognition instant captioning, which is infinitely nearer, technology-wise) is what would be useful for me, not this.

But even in terms of those who it WOULD be useful for, it is so far away from utility. ASL grammar is about movement, facial expressions, speed of signs, etc., etc. Even if this device recognizes the signs "man", "dog", and "car", it has no way of differentiating between "The man put the dog in the car," "the man hit the dog with the car", "the man was bitten by the dog that leapt out from under the car", etc., etc., etc.