Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: illiterate society
Message-ID: <3888@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 6 Mar 90 00:46:55 GMT
References: <808@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> <1990Mar5.173358.25523@comm.WANG.COM>
Organization: College of Engg., Univ. of Cincinnati
Lines: 64

In article <1990Mar5.173358.25523@comm.WANG.COM> lws@comm.WANG.COM (Lyle Seaman) writes:
>Well, what we would we do if telephones suddenly 
>disappeared (unlikely)?  I imagine we'd write a lot more letters.  And
>our society _would_ be different.  So I don't believe that society AS

It's not unlikely at all, at least locally and temporarily. The
telephone network has many critical exchanges whose failure can
paralyze communications for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands
of customers.  Thanks to the general reliability of the phone system,
these failures are rare. But they do occur, and the well-known result
is bedlam and severe economic losses. If telephones suddenly
disappeared, we would not simply "write a lot more letters." Rather,
our entire financial and industrial systems would collapse within days
if not hours, authorities would be unable to maintain order, and
starvation would set into large cities within weeks.

>WE NOW KNOW IT will rely on such a technology, I think that the society
>produced as a result of the technology would unavoidably depend on it.

Well yes, that is exactly true. As long as human population continues
to increase, and social institutions become ever more complex, we need
more technological inputs to keep the show running. Once we incorporate
a technology, we can't simply pull the plug on it. We've already
burned the bridge behind us. Our only choice is to press on, replacing
each old technology with more effective new technologies. Or else
allow 90% of the population to die.

>On the other hand, it is doubtful that speech technology alone could 
>replace written language.  The bandwidth of the visual channel is so 
>much greater than the bandwidth of the aural channel.  Yes, spoken 
>language does convey certain  nuances that written language may fail to
>convey (sarcasm, for instance).  But sarcasm is not usually an essential
>feature of physics texts.  Being able to control the rate of assimilation
>is very important to understanding information-dense subjects, being able
>to back up and re-read a phrase or a paragraph, easily and quickly.

I find that I experience rapid fatigue listening to a technical
discussion, whereas I can read the same level of material for hours if
necessary. I suspect most of the problem stems from being unable to
control the rate or content of the incoming data. Also, the spoken
word is inherently serial data, whereas text + graphics can take on a
parallel structure. For example, by laying out many text blocks on a
desk or workstation screen, the information worker can establish a
spatial framework for organizing and digesting complex information.
Since humans are good at spatial reasoning, apparently the ability to
associate glancing in a given location with obtaining a certain fact
is a great adjunct to learning. Consider how transparent the menu
structure of a familiar program can become. You can formulate
"questions" for the machine simply by a mechanical movement or
gesture. This may be easier than abstracting those questions into
verbal queries.

For a speech-based interface to be generally useful, it would have to
contain at least some of the abilities of the human expert. The human
expert is able to listen to the scrambled queries from the human client,
deduce what the client is *really* asking, and then tell the client.
But I don't know how the speech-based interface would derive an advantage
over an equally smart graphics interface. Of course, in field and real-time
applications, speech-based interfaces would be very useful, for the
worker who doesn't have any free hands, must keep visual attention locked
on real-world objects, or must receive alarm messages quickly.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu