Published August 4, 1998
People are "surfing" the Internet everyday. A recent article in Business Week discussed a breakthrough in technology! Engineers at Sony's D21 lab have developed a robotic dog, complete with a 64-bit central processing unit, 8 megabytes of memory, and a supersensitive camera "eye" that enables it to obey motion commands. For example, if you stick your hand out, Dogbot will sit. The robot is reconfigurable, so that the owner can swap out limbs or even the head. Each module is "intelligent" equipped with its own motor and control chip. Mr. Toshitada Doi, who is the head of Sony's D21 lab, suggested that there should be a consumer market among children for the dogbots sometime around the year 2000.
Mr. Doi's brainchild could also provide people with disabilities with more control over their environment. They could have the companionship of a pet without having to feed it. Numerous studies have proven that convalescing patients recover quicker around pets, as they do not judge us. In the future, the robots will be able to perform basic attendant care functions such as picking up items that have fallen to the ground. This would be ideal for high level quadriplegics that use wheelchairs. The problem with existing robotics is the cost and limitations of movement they can perform. One only need to watch Robocop to witness first hand how mechanical feet have difficulties traversing stairs!
The Investor's Business Daily recently published an article stating that Internet-based phone services are poised to overtake conventional phone traffic by the year 2000, according to the British consulting firm Analysys. Analysys predicts that pricing of online and conventional phone networks will converge within the next three to five years. I have always proposed that the telephone is the most useful technology for people with disabilities that we take for granted! This means that telephony which is a combination of telephone technology, computer technology, and video may take over as our primary means of telecommunication. Using video conferencing over the Internet, people with disabilities can bring people and the world to them without leaving their home!
Secret Writer's Society, which is an educational software program for children has exhibited an unusual glitch according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Under certain circumstances it can spew forth language that would make a sailor blush. Matsushita's Panasonic Interactive Media created the program for children with learning disabilities. The program, among other things, recites written compositions back to users in a computer-generated voice. The problem is that there is a bug in the filter that is supposed to prevent the text-to-speech function from reciting foul language. Instead of suppressing those words, it delves into its archives of prohibited words, and strings together streams of obscenities that go way beyond George Carlin's seven banned words! The editor-in-chief of SuperKids, which reviews educational software on the Web, says that he was able to activate the glitch simply by writing a passage longer than just a few sentences and double-click the mouse instead of single-clicking. Remember all of those times that you swore at your computer. It's now the computer's turn!
Finally, the Canadian Government plans to spend $30 million over the next five years in developing Canadian content for Internet sites, CD-ROM's and other multimedia projects created by private companies according to a recent Toronto Star Article. While speaking to delegates at a conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Prime Minister Chretien reiterated plans for Ottawa to spend $260 million to help communities "wire-up", he also announced an additional $55 million in federal funding for CANARIE which is a joint public/private sector venture for Internet technology, and he confirmed a previous announcement of another $205 million for SchoolNet to link every school and public library in Canada to the Internet. In theory, having a technology based society should level the playing field for people with disabilities. By the year 2000, 60% of all employment opportunities will require the use of computers. Way to go Jean!
