Excerpt:
To the casual observer, the kind of technological breakthroughs Microsoft researchers make may seem to be out of this world.
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I came across this collection of short science fiction stories from Microsoft. I hate that I like it (I still haven’t forgiven Gates for 1995’s shenanigans with Netscape and others – & for, well, breaking the ethos of the Internet), but it seems like a ‘page turner’. I’ve only read half the first story, mind, as it is not available to me in iTunes locally and Amazon is suggesting it does not deliver to my region despite it being an e-book. I could use a shop and ship address, but it’s kind of annoying that it isn’t just available as a PDF – combined with my & Bill’s ‘history’, it was enough to put me off for now.
One thing I did think about from the first half of the first story, in which translation and natural language programming has reached the point of being able to translate signing into spoken language and spoken language to text in real time, is that while we herald the benefits of technology for differently abled people, we also ignore what it could mean for communities like the Deaf community, and cultures like Deaf culture. I’m not really qualified to speak on it myself, but I’d be interested in hearing the perspectives of people from within the Deaf community.