[Nfbf-l] virtual barber

[taraprakash]

Dear all. This will sound off topic unless I explain the context of it. So you will need to patiently till the end to get the link. And to have the best effect you will have to listen with your stereo headphone, making sure that you know which side goes in to which ear.

This is part of 1 of my research interest, the difference between the sense of listening and sense of sight. Why do you think that blind of real old time had a better life than the blind just 3 generations before us? Not having eye sight was not considered as troublesome a thousand years ago, as it was considered just hundred years ago. The reason is the ideals that came with the period of enlightenment. It was the period when Europeans rediscovered some Greek and Latin texts which showed them the path of scientific and secular thinking. As we moved from enlightenment to empiricism and from there to scientific revolution, the sense of sight kept getting more and more prominent. 
The time just before the age of enlightenment is known as "dark ages" in the history. So those who did not take to the knowledge system prescribed by "enlightenment" were concerned unenlightened, those living in dark. Blind were litterally living in dark, as they could not see light. 
>From Enlightenment onwards, seeing was equal to knowing. 

That is perhaps whythe word "blind" is also used to denote ignorance. "I see" means I understand. To be blind about something means to be ignorant about something.

But I believe that sense of sight will not remain as important as it has been in last 400 years. We the blind are helping the light dependent discover the power of ears. 

They learnt from us how to listen a book, an aubio book. Audible that has the largest collection of audio books caters to the sighted audio book readers. The sighted world is now learning to use text to speech programs. They have it in the GPS systems. When amazon decided to include a text to speech program in their latest Kindle 2, they were not being altruistic towards the blind. 

During one of my sight versus voice ramblings,, a friend asked me how at all virtual reality was possible without sight. Virtual reality is the latest fad, or a little more than that, if you read Ray Kurzweil's "Age of Spiritual Machines". The link below will play a file that creates virtual reality without the sight. And thanks for reading this mail. Please make sure you know your left and right ear for the headphones.

Use a good stereo headphone for the best effect. Make sure you use the correct corresponding ear plug for the left and right ears. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA 

Thanks
TaraPrakash