As I was working on this presentation, I began to formulate some predictions of my own, just for the fun of it. The explanations for why I made the predictions might be helpful for those of you trying to make sense of the complex issues summarized above.
Trends evolve into reality because they become pathways, guides to a potential future. Once ideas get into the cultural biosphere, key people work to make the future happen. If you arrived at this site, you are one of the key people.
On the other hand, television did not do away with the radio. Tape recorders and talking technologies have not done away with Braille. And sophisticated navigation technologies will not do away with the cane, nor with cane trainers. But the "age of the cane" is dying now, and may be history before the end of this decade.
The field of orientation and mobility has a self image as a "cane training" profession. This image was adopted by agencies and consumers and is part of the traditional heritage of the profession. This has to change. There is no choice. Failure to broaden the profession, failure to make the field more sophisticated and complex, will cause a shrinkage in our reputation and value. We have to expand our self image and our sophistication. It is a "thrive or perish" situation. There is a single reason for this dilemma: computer technology is changing at an exponential rate. For more in-depth discussion, see the presentation section of the Wayfinding Textbook).
The end result of this revolution in computer technology is that the creative power we can derive from manmade tools is expanding at an ever increasing rate. The cost of computing power is dropping exponentially. The size of computers is shrinking exponentially. The speed of computers is increasing exponentially. Therefore, we can accomplish feats now that were impossible only a few years ago.
Understand that we are talking about progress in technology, not about the society that is faced with the new tools. Cultural challenges are a far more complicated issue. Our failure to embrace technology cannot be laid at the feet of leadership or at the doorstep of the institutions that constitute the blind rehabilitation field. This is a gigantic problem that faces industrial society as a whole. We live with the structures and attitudes of an earlier age in history (the industrial age). We grew up "knowing" how to function as children of the industrial era. That era is on the way out, and it is inadequate to the challenges facing all our institutions, all our professions. We have to create change, or change will make us irrelevant. To do nothing is to surrender. Failure to make a choice, failure to embrace the technologies, failure to change is a vote for the demise of the profession.
We have to face the fact that our institutions are not designed to address exponential change. Once we acknowledge that, we can get on with the task of creating a wonderful future. The ingredients include: some very creative thinking, a heavy dose of institutional re-organization, a radical shift in funding priorities, an overhaul of the standard university curriculum, a re-write of many laws, and the establishment of alternative training strategies. Mix with a shared determination and a common focus, and we have the ingredients to forge a productive future (no big deal, right?).
See the discussion in the Wayfinding Textbook about Environmental literacy for a more detailed discussion.
Several changes (trends, forces) are taking place simultaneously. These forces are creating a revolution in orientation technology. We call this set of forces "environmental literacy." This is the single most powerful force impacting the profession of orientation and mobility. If we embrace this technology we will flourish as a profession, and consumers will gain unprecedented power over their own movement. If we don't embrace these forces, we will fade from the scene as a viable profession.
To be "environmentally literate" means that an individual knows about orientation tools like GPS and location based databases, and that they can use these tools to navigate safely and efficiently. Let's look at the new tools that collectively create the potential for an "environmental literacy."
Global positioning satellite systems (GPS) give us a way to label any outdoor point on planet Earth. This means that every square inch of the planet can be used as a distinct landmark. Every spot can now be given a name and can potentially be used by navigators (blind or not) to locate their exact position. This is called "location based information." Because all locations have a distinct longitude and a distinct latitude (the spot's name), GPS technology enables us to quickly determine our heading, the distance to a location, the location points at which we need to make turns, and the potential time of arrival, given a travel speed (with a pedometer). GPS technology by itself is an important new wayfinding tool.
As computers get cheaper and shrink in size, we will embed them in any object that we choose. This is called ubiquitous or embedded computing. Various groups will embed computers to address specialized needs, so, like it or not, every object, every space, even the materials things are made of, will receive embedded intelligence. The stuff and the spaces of the world will get smarter and smarter and smarter (just think about automobiles). And, it will all communicate with other smart stuff, as well as with people. The bottom line here is that we are building (very rapidly) a huge body of spatial knowledge. So, not only will location based data from GPS systems provide orientation information, but for every spot on earth there is evolving volumes of knowledge. Let's take an example.
You are at an intersection in a strange city. You need to get back to your hotel, but you are not sure of your directions. A GPS system can tell you exactly where you are, exactly where the hotel is located, and it can map out a route for you. There is, if you care to know, also a large body of knowledge that is relevant to your location. This data has been compiled by many independent businesses, consumer groups, neighborhood organizations, government agencies, and more. The travel industry, for example, has detailed information on it's data bases about the history of your location, the distance to restaurants, hotels, and tourist sites. The city's chamber of commerce has detailed information about the businesses near you, the malls, the pharmacies, doctors offices, etc. Airlines, shipping companies, the military, agencies concerned with transportation, are all creating and constantly updating maps. Blind individuals who have stood in the exact same spot (or near by) have also recorded their knowledge about your location, the dangers, the best routes, phone numbers and addresses. All this spatial knowledge (and more) is available on the internet. GPS plus the internet is a powerful new orientation system, but it is only part of the story (only part of the potential).
As the spaces and objects of the world get smarter (at an accelerating rate), they will also get increasingly able to communicate. In short, if we want our toaster to talk to us, it will have that option. The important idea for wayfinding is that signs and landmarks will talk, and they will talk a language relevant to navigation. Signs that talk have already evolved and been deployed in many of the world's large cities (London and San Francisco, for example). These systems are being set up especially for navigationally disabled travelers (for example, people who are blind, or people who are illiterate). "Things and spaces that talk " plus GPS, plus the internet add to the challenge of teaching students to become environmental literate. But there is more to the collage.
Because of terrorism, fear of crime, and because of the desire to keep track of people we care about (or who work for us), societies are becoming surveillance intensive. Increasingly, we will embed smart tags in our possessions, on our pets, and attached to our loved ones. These electronic ID tags will indicate (along with personal information) location. These tags will constantly be in communication with environmental tracking systems. There are several technologies under development that track human beings as they move about. These systems go by various names like sentient computing, or ambient computing. Related to GPS is a technology called dead reckoning that tracks movement inside spaces rather than outdoors (GPS can "hand off" to indoor tracking systems). These tracking/surveillance systems could be modified to provide wayfinding information. Now we have an environmental soup brewing. We have GPS, talking landmarks, internet data bases, and tracking surveillance systems, all with the built-in intelligence to communicate with each other and with wayfinding humans. Add two more ingredients and the soup is ready.
We need a cheap way to network and access spatial knowledge. We need to have access any time and from anywhere. The answer to this is rapidly evolving. It is wireless networking. The cheapest, fastest, most accurate wireless development (in 2002) is ultra wide band technology. This is a digital radio system that can be used as a form of location identification tool (like GPS without satellites), radar, or radio. As a location system it can be employed inside or outside and even underground.
The final ingredient is the cell phone. This is the access tool that (potentially) links to the data bases of the internet, connects to the GPS satellites, activates signage, networks with surveillance tracking sensors, uses fast, cheap wide band wireless, is itself an ID tag, and when all else fails can be used to make phone calls (Hello mom, I'm lost). All of these things together generate a body of spatial knowledge that did not exist a decade ago.
Which brings us to this interesting legal question: As a blind member of this society, do you or do you not have a legal right to access this new body of spatial knowledge? Do the laws that govern accessibility include access to smart spaces? If you have the right to be literate (educated) in a democratic society, does this right to (media based, near point) literacy include the right to environmental literacy (far point literacy)? If there are legal rights, should there not be funding for accessing wayfinding technologies?
There is too much knowledge coming at the university programs. There are too many new wayfinding technologies to evaluate. There is too little time to reorganize. There are insufficient funds. The amount of knowledge to be managed is increasing exponentially. The varieties and number of emerging (and upgraded) wayfinding technologies to be understood are increasing exponentially. There is no way that university programs alone can address the crisis (good and bad) brought on by the computer revolution.
The training received in 2001 in GPS technology is no longer valid with the release of the 2002 GPS notebook system. Training in the use of The vOICe is obsolete every other month as the inventor upgrades and retools. On one day a familiar intersection is crossed as usual. A day later traffic engineers have actuated the intersection and put up talking ped heads. You spend five thousand dollars on sonic glasses and two years later a version six times more accurate is on the market for three thousand dollars less. And you never did master the sonic glasses; never had time to read the manual, never had time enough to practice. The degree in orientation and mobility that was issued in 2002 is obsolete (in regard to technology especially) by 2003. We got a problem here.
This is a problem as wide as the entire North American education system. The idea that you can grasp a body of knowledge in four years is obsolete. Eight years won't do either, nor twelve. A life time is too short. So the idea that a diploma represents a verification that the holder has grasped the essentials of a profession is old thinking. It ain't so. Similarly, having a title, belonging to a profession, is obsolete. The whole system, by design, cannot address the issue of acceleration; too much knowledge, too much technology, not enough time, energy, or money. What are we to do?
This is what I think. We have to create a modern day guild system. A university could do this, but probably it will fall to non-profit training centers (like dog guide schools or consumer training centers like at NFB) or to private corporations where there is a vested interest in training for specific technologies (for example, Humanware training mobility specialists to use GPS). Because of rapid change, people will belong to guilds for life (or the life of contracts). This is a membership arrangement wherein the businesses charge regular fees for services (not for the products). In return for the fees, services will include initial training, periodic retraining, technical support, repair and upgrading of technologies. The future is about on-demand (real time, internet based), consumer driven, membership in a learning arena.
The modern guild will be about using the world of networks. It will be about the re-organization of industrial institutions into training partnerships. The universities and the dog guide schools, the businesses and the non-profit sector, must each melt down (lose the isolated island mentality) and re-forge into a global network. This is happening already and will accelerate (even if we do nothing).
Products are becoming processes. Hardware is becoming software. Life long, real time learning has to evolve to keep pace with change. Education must no longer be about the hardware (the diploma). It must become process: life long connection to networks supplying real time, on-demand, information.
See the wayfinding textbook under wearable computers for a detailed discussion.
Human beings have been cyborgs since the first time they put the technology called "clothing" on their bodies. With the acceleration in computer processing, we are seeing ever more sophisticated combinations of "human plus machine." We are putting intelligent stuff on and in our bodies at an increasing rate. The stuff itself is getting smaller (moving toward the invisible), more affordable (moving toward free), more networked, and ever more intelligent. Indeed, every eighteen months the stuff of cyborgs is getting twice as cheap, twice as small, three times as networked, and twice as smart!
Brain level implant networks, combined with wearable computing networks, combined with external communications networks, will result in human cyborgs perceiving unlike any other human has ever perceived. While we are trying to figure out how a person is perceiving, what the implications, side affects, potentials are, the next wave of even more complex cyborgs will present themselves at our door. The bottom line is that the old categories for demographics will fall apart and a whole new mishmash of categories will evolve.
The ability to do that is here now. We just don't have the social structure (and the parallel mindset) to do it. Given an appropriately trained teacher, equipped with (for example) a location based orientation system, a curriculum, and a ton of time (for both teacher and student), we can prescribe an individually tailored system to match the needs of our clients, today. The future will just increase the number of potential technologies, the sophistication of these tools, and the results. We should be able to selectively prescribe systems to "cure" the problem of blind navigation.
If Braille works, then other vision substitution systems should work just as smoothly and accurately. What is missing here is the social structure to teach (support) the use of these systems. They are just getting more and more sophisticated, cheaper and cheaper, more and more invisible, more and more accurate, as we sit here. Sooner or later, the potential of this approach will emerge.
Sony Corporation has an artificial creatures lab. They have smart robotic dogs and cats on sale now. These robots can already see colors, identify faces, plug themselves in, use GPS, talk, play music and games, and walk around quite naturally. Just how sophisticated (intelligent and sensory enabled) will these robots become given the exponential nature of technological change? Very, very, very, very, etc.
It is inevitable that these new tools will evolve to aid all people with disabilities. The chance of navigation systems developing depend on the time and energy our profession gives to this potential. I see these artificial guide animals evolving first as toy (teaching) companions for blind kids (all kids really). Nothing is happening at the moment because we lack the social structure to take advantage of the technology.
Occupational and Physical Therapists define their field in very flexible terms. Both disciplines are very concerned about navigation. They are professions that are very comfortable with adapting and applying emerging technologies. They are sub-dividing and specializing their profession rapidly. They are working with wayfinding technologies. They are in the field of low vision. They have even gotten in trouble (from us) for teaching cane skills. Compare this with the profession of orientation and mobility, and with our strongly held image as a cane training discipline. The main emphasis at the university level is cane training. Agencies for the blind expect that this is the chief function of the O&M specialist, what they do with most of their time, what they get paid to do. Consumer groups fight for the cane with the same vigor they use to defend Braille. The blind rehabilitation system is a "cane dominated" world. How do we stack up against the therapists, as we enter this digital age?
Yet the cane is important, and it does take a lot of time to learn. So cane training won't go away. But if we are to be part of the brave new world of sophisticated wayfinding technology, we will have to evolve subdisciplines. No single human being has the time to be an expert in environmental literacy, vision substitution, and robotics. No one even has the time to be an expert trainer on the whole of an area like environmental literacy; you would need a signage expert, a GPS expert, and a sentient computing expert.
One way out of this complexity is specialization. On the other hand, we might evolve a global comprehension of the wayfinding landscape and then lead teams of occupational and physical therapists as they do the daily face to face work that they are so good at (maybe we can eat our lunch WITH the therapists!).
To "network" simply means to communicate. It means "to create partnerships." It is a movement away from isolation and self interest. It is about sharing power and responsibility. Networks can be tiny (quantum level) or they can be huge (the internet, or whole cultures). We are talking here about the networks at two extremes, the very small and the very large.
At the small scale, we are looking at the computer networks that are tripling in size every eighteen months. This is the world of the internet, the object net, the spatial net, the personal area network, the internal area networks of implanted chips, etc. To understand this is to understand the potential and the danger of exponential technological change. To understand this positions individuals and organizations to be in the right place at the right time; knowledge leads to power (credibility, influence), which leads to wealth.
At the large scale, those who understand the exponential explosion of small networks, will create and nurture social networks. This is the age of communication, cooperation, and partnership. An analogy may be helpful.
There are analogies within the fields of astronomy and biology which show how we can accomplish great feats within our own profession. When astronomers decided to map the stars in the entire universe, they were faced with a challenge (at the time) that was impossible. Given the state of technology, it would have taken hundreds of years to complete such an ambitious task, if it could be done at all. But astronomers were able to map the entire known universe, well within the life times of the people who laid down the challenge.
When biologists decided to map the entire human genome, they were faced with a similar challenge. Given the state of technology, it would have taken a century to figure out the human gene code. But they did it in within the life span of the scientists who first conceived the objectives. How did the astronomers and biologists pull off these unparalleled accomplishments? There are two reasons.
First of all, they knew about Moore's Law. They simply took it on faith that the computational power of computers would continue to increase exponentially. They believed that the power to solve their problems would be in their hands as the years ticked by. They were correct.
Secondly, they learned about, believed in, and took advantage of the power of collective action. They used the internet and telecommunications systems to work together on a global scale. They mobilized the scientific troops. The astronomers, for example, electronically networked all the Earth's big telescopes and created one huge virtual telescope. This virtual telescope was many magnitudes more powerful than any stand alone system. It watched day and night, never having any down moments. The biologists signed up labs all over the planet and divided up the task of hunting and decoding gene sequences. They took all the isolated scientists and linked them together on a communications network. They had a universal theme and they created a global workforce.
As we speak, the field of blind rehabilitation is fragmented. There is no universal theme, no global workforce. We are isolated islands of knowledge and opinion. Yet the same computational tools lay on the table before us, getting ever more powerful as we sit here. The internet awaits. The telecommunications technologies grow ever more accessible, powerful, and affordable as we sit here. We have the tools to create technologies that would solve the problem of navigating blind. We can create that future, starting now.
This is a dangerous thing to say, and it borders on cruel insensitivity. I try not to over kill this wonderful possibility. Too many of my friends are blind or are the parents of blind children. And yet the technology is accelerating. Science fiction is giving way to reality. There is hope and speculation where none could have been possible even ten years ago.
Biology will meet the implant at the nanoscale, sooner rather than later; the raw technology is on the table. Stem cells are already creating miracles. Genetic manipulation technology is moving so fast it has out paced our ethical and legal systems. The tools of medicine are getting exponentially more sophisticated. It actually does appear that an "end" will come.
In the meantime, we will be faced with wave after wave of intermediate success, ever more cyborgs, each more complex than the last. It's a pretty amazing time to be alive on planet earth. Yet, the opportunities for a wonderful future await a functional social structure. (And the side affects and dangers? That's another set of challenges that cannot be ignored; they have just not been the subject of this presentation. But we ignore the dark side at our great peril).