I just hit the blog site for this week's readings and I'm a little bit off-topic, mostly because I'm deaf. In order to get the full effect of the recordings, I had to have the site open in two spots at the same time, one for the transcript and one for the actual recording. Normally, I would just read the transcript but my thinking here is that if a writer makes the decision to use spoken word in a space that mainly caters to written text, the sound itself may make the point. So I made sure to listen.

That process reminded me of the instant watch option on Netflix. I don't use it because they do not offer subtitles on their films. I'm not entirely certain why this decision was made, but it means that I don't get the full use out of my subscription, compared to others. Now, I'm not really complaining because this feature was introduced after I subscribed, thus I'm not losing anything, I'm just not gaining it.

I'm going in a circle here, so let me get back on track and say that the issue I'm thinking about right now is how technology divides instead of unites. I think as a society we tend to hail the connectivity of technology today, the way it can bring us all together. We gloss over the wedge this drives in between us at times.

I'm going to leave aside socioeconomic status considerations. Frankly, Jonathon Kozol and others do much better with that facet of this issue than I would. So I'm not talking about a child told to go home and type a paper when going home means riding the bus because the family cannot afford a car. I'm talking about the deaf child in the age of radio experiencing only the looks of joy on the faces around her. I'm talking about the blind child listening to his family say “Look at that!” in fascination at the images on their first TV. I'm talking about sitting in a class in sixth grade and fighting tears as the sign language interpreter relays to me that we're going to be watching a movie. At that point, it had been less than six months since I'd lost my hearing and I knew I would understand neither the movie nor the interpreter.

It did not help at all that the teacher arranged for neither a closed caption decoder on the television used nor a movie that featured closed captioning. Keep in mind, in 1989 the legislation requiring decoding capability to be built into televisions was still a year from writing and four years from the implementation date. The movie itself was a Wonderful World of Disney production and was followed by a discussion. My participation was limited to trying to look interested when the teacher looked my way.

Technology will move forward and there will be new things. These new things will find their way into classes. We cannot and should not fight that. Without the advance of technology, I'm deaf, period. But that ten year old boy is begging you to consider everyone in your classroom when you introduce tech.