To be a more Kindly Kindle
E-book was something I was looking for for sometime and expecting them to come down in price so that even school kids can use them.
I have many reason and some of them are special and related to disability.
People are not born equal and many have minor or major disabilities.
Visual handicap is one theme, I have been interested and it looks like I myself come into that category with the type of typos I make on daily basis.
I hate making mistakes especially typos but it has become a common occurrence.
Thank god their is spell checker but sometimes I feel spell checker itself is a handicap.
One has to keep on checking the word and the meaning and many a time, mainly due to oversight, they keep appearing and re-reading ones own writing is not something I fancy.
I have to do this on daily basis.
Most of these mistakes are due to small fonts and the distance between ones eye and the monitor, which is basically a physical relationship and not a handicap by itself.
Having worked with children and elderly with multiple disabilities the scope becomes much bigger in here in my writing.
1. Physical-Hand Eye coordination (keyboard and monitor)
2. Various degree of visual handicap including age related.
3. Hearing Difficulty
4. Various types of dyslexia
5. Many other disabilities including language.
I take language as a major handicap to use computers (English) and programng language is one of the most significant. Visual basic has made some impact but I think it has not done enough to integrate with natural language which is basically written or spoken.
I will concentrate here on written and spoken.
This is where Amazons should make giant step.
The ipod is killing its entry into main stream but ipod and the hifi gadgets are for the able and busy bodied rich guys and girls.
In my case I have so many books which I have read and many I keep for reference since library facilities especially in English books are vanishing species now with Swabasha emphasis on government schools.
It has become problem with taking lot of space and I do not want to make my living quarters a library.
I prefer big open space.
If I can take all my books out and put all that into a Kindle that is the last think I wish in my life.
Then I can take everything out of my room cum study or donate them to a school or university library.
When I want to fish a book or an article it takes ages sometimes days since the last time I made some in depth study of that material may be 5 or 10 years ago.
Facts are vivid in my memory with minor memory failure (almost normal in nature) and a bit hazy in some areas that need either clearing or refining.
If the kindle can do that with the help of the publishers and coordinate e-phasing (that is a new word I am coining here) my library of books it would be a blessing for my kith and kin in my absence.
My mother who passed away on 92 had wonderful memory of Dhamma which she had read and understood better than me.
She knew all the verses by heart.
In my case I never by heart, but remember where it came from, book or volume or article and refer them (that is my scientific way of approaching a problem) as often as can be when the need arises and get the meaning into ordinary English, not scholarly adage.
Brevity and simplicity is my attempt but vary rarely succeed in doing so since Dhamma has meaning beyond its general appearance at face level and is sometimes so succinct I miss the point in my deliberations.
She lost the ability and interest in reading almost suddenly.
Then whenever I get an opportunity I flick a page and start reading from some leading stem read and she recite the rest with my initial prompt.
Then I tell her the meaning, which is the most difficult part and the higher level of cognition.
Unfortunately Dhamma is for the extremely intelligent (she is intelligent enough and there are no arguments developing in these very brief dispensations but occasionally she alerts me if I am off the target a lot).
This was a two way process since she had read thousand times more than me.
The procedure ends that she knows it better attitude even though I had some major disagreements in content.
They were supplemented with TV, radio and cassettes and not books.
From reading stage she went to listening stage.
Then her memory started failing (short term) and things like she had eaten or had a drink but till the very late stages could recite but concentrate on few verses of four in spite of the disorientation in time and used to sleep (very lucky) a lot.
This is where kindle would have been helpful.
If Kindle had all the verses and the sound to go with, it would have been a big boost to her moral.
In her lucid intervals it could have been a nice companion.
So kindle could be a lovely companion for elderly gentlemen/women in retirement.
Equally it would be intellectual boost for kids, especially the handicapped.
The biggest obstacle was the price and now it has broken the sound barrier so to speak of market philosophy and could be affordable in the third world too.
Another venture would be in different language.
Imagine if they can introduce it to mainland China.
Like breaking the sound barrier Kindly should break the language barrier too.
People are not born equal and many have minor or major disabilities.
Visual handicap is one theme, I have been interested and it looks like I myself come into that category with the type of typos I make on daily basis.
I hate making mistakes especially typos but it has become a common occurrence.
Thank god their is spell checker but sometimes I feel spell checker itself is a handicap.
One has to keep on checking the word and the meaning and many a time, mainly due to oversight, they keep appearing and re-reading ones own writing is not something I fancy.
I have to do this on daily basis.
Most of these mistakes are due to small fonts and the distance between ones eye and the monitor, which is basically a physical relationship and not a handicap by itself.
Having worked with children and elderly with multiple disabilities the scope becomes much bigger in here in my writing.
1. Physical-Hand Eye coordination (keyboard and monitor)
2. Various degree of visual handicap including age related.
3. Hearing Difficulty
4. Various types of dyslexia
5. Many other disabilities including language.
I take language as a major handicap to use computers (English) and programng language is one of the most significant. Visual basic has made some impact but I think it has not done enough to integrate with natural language which is basically written or spoken.
I will concentrate here on written and spoken.
This is where Amazons should make giant step.
The ipod is killing its entry into main stream but ipod and the hifi gadgets are for the able and busy bodied rich guys and girls.
In my case I have so many books which I have read and many I keep for reference since library facilities especially in English books are vanishing species now with Swabasha emphasis on government schools.
It has become problem with taking lot of space and I do not want to make my living quarters a library.
I prefer big open space.
If I can take all my books out and put all that into a Kindle that is the last think I wish in my life.
Then I can take everything out of my room cum study or donate them to a school or university library.
When I want to fish a book or an article it takes ages sometimes days since the last time I made some in depth study of that material may be 5 or 10 years ago.
Facts are vivid in my memory with minor memory failure (almost normal in nature) and a bit hazy in some areas that need either clearing or refining.
If the kindle can do that with the help of the publishers and coordinate e-phasing (that is a new word I am coining here) my library of books it would be a blessing for my kith and kin in my absence.
My mother who passed away on 92 had wonderful memory of Dhamma which she had read and understood better than me.
She knew all the verses by heart.
In my case I never by heart, but remember where it came from, book or volume or article and refer them (that is my scientific way of approaching a problem) as often as can be when the need arises and get the meaning into ordinary English, not scholarly adage.
Brevity and simplicity is my attempt but vary rarely succeed in doing so since Dhamma has meaning beyond its general appearance at face level and is sometimes so succinct I miss the point in my deliberations.
She lost the ability and interest in reading almost suddenly.
Then whenever I get an opportunity I flick a page and start reading from some leading stem read and she recite the rest with my initial prompt.
Then I tell her the meaning, which is the most difficult part and the higher level of cognition.
Unfortunately Dhamma is for the extremely intelligent (she is intelligent enough and there are no arguments developing in these very brief dispensations but occasionally she alerts me if I am off the target a lot).
This was a two way process since she had read thousand times more than me.
The procedure ends that she knows it better attitude even though I had some major disagreements in content.
They were supplemented with TV, radio and cassettes and not books.
From reading stage she went to listening stage.
Then her memory started failing (short term) and things like she had eaten or had a drink but till the very late stages could recite but concentrate on few verses of four in spite of the disorientation in time and used to sleep (very lucky) a lot.
This is where kindle would have been helpful.
If Kindle had all the verses and the sound to go with, it would have been a big boost to her moral.
In her lucid intervals it could have been a nice companion.
So kindle could be a lovely companion for elderly gentlemen/women in retirement.
Equally it would be intellectual boost for kids, especially the handicapped.
The biggest obstacle was the price and now it has broken the sound barrier so to speak of market philosophy and could be affordable in the third world too.
Another venture would be in different language.
Imagine if they can introduce it to mainland China.
Like breaking the sound barrier Kindly should break the language barrier too.
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