It’s a no brainer April 21, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: Career, funding, research, risk, utopian theory
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OK, so here’s a bizarre proof of Utopian Theory if I ever saw one…
If you read this regularly, you’ll know that I finished my PhD in 2009 – right at the point when the bottom dropped out of the UK Higher Education job market – and have been eagerly looking for an academic position ever since.
In the meantime, I’ve made myself useful in IT Services at the University of Bristol where I have a secure job that I quite enjoy – and dipped into as much teaching and writing as I can afford.
It’s not academia though, so that’s still the eventual aim… except that getting into academia is almost impossible if you don’t have the required publications or funding – and I don’t, because my job hasn’t allowed me time to write, or apply.
Consequently, although I have the ‘potential’ to be a successful academic – all of the jobs that are advertised are out of my league, even though they are for ‘beginners’.
However, now, things are slowly changing. (more…)
Why don’t we use open-channel communication more? April 19, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings, Technology.Tags: communication, open-channel communication, revolution
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I realised, when I opened this to write, that it’s already been nearly 6 weeks since I last wrote.
The main reason for this is that – post AAG, I’ve been concentrating on getting the resources list at the Deaf Geographies Sandbox blog as complete as possible, and any other time I would have used arriving early at work, and at lunchtime, to write, I’ve spent instead putting together an outline bid for funding.
It’s been a back-breaking task because I’m so out of practice – and reading through what I’ve written – it’s not actually very good, but I can see how to make it good. So, time well spent.
Also time well spent because, for the first time, I feel like I can actually see a way to move gracefully from where I am to where I’d like to be, and actually continue to work with the IT department that currently houses me.
Time will tell whether the funding bodies actually go for it – but if they do, then not only will I get to do the research that I want to do – but I might be able to harness some of the funding to some develop some pretty funky online resources based around Deaf history and geographies.
But that’s not what’s spurred me to write this evening – rather, that comes from a phone call that I’ve just had with my wife who is currently in Barbados (more…)
What happens if the SL recognition app works – part II March 15, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: attitude, Interpreters, machine translation, Oralism, Sign Language Translation
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This is in response to Mary Beth Kitzel’s post at http://mbkitzel.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/on-signing-apps-and-interpreters-a-response-to-mike-gullivers-blog-what-happens-if-the-sl-recognition-app-works/
And also extends some thoughts that I’ve had, particularly since Austin Kocher’s presentation on the spaces inhabited by interpreters at this year’s AAG.
Austin’s paper was great – but also worrying. In it, he gave an outline of the level, and type of cultural theory (for that, don’t read Cultural Theory à la Edward T. Hall – although that too, read cultural theory – i.e. knowledge about culture) that interpreter trainees are formally exposed to during training.
His conclusion, and that of those listening (well, me at least!) – that although Deaf cultural theory is steaming ahead into the realms of performativity, positionality, reflexivity, hybridity, postcoloniality and so on, interpreters may well be starting their active service with a cultural toolbox that is ten years out of date.
… And so to Mary Beth’s response, which is from someone that I know to be committed to the Deaf community, to her profession, her research, and to her own personal integrity in the journey and whose cultural toolbox is certainly not ten years out of date…
To clear up her easier question first – yes, I am interested in the “larger social questions any time a technology has overtaken a craft-based skill set”. Like MB, I am quite a fan of the ‘slow’ life (in fact, we’ve been talking about this out of band) and would rather imagine a world that is less ‘efficient’ and more ‘holistic’ in many ways.
For what it’s worth, I’m more of an ‘adapter’ with withdrawal tendencies than a ‘smasher’… rather than assert that any one ‘way’ has the right to remain unquestionably unchanged, I prefer to play with the deeper questions about society that new methods provoke.
Perhaps that’s a snobbish reluctance to get my hands dirty – perhaps I’m just more of an introvert?
Anyway.
She’s also right – in many ways, I am “probing the idea that sign language interpreting qualifies as a special case in comparison to all the other previous cases of skill based technological change in that the relationship between signers and interpreters can be contentious”.
Interestingly, it’s not a need that is automatically between ‘signers and interpreters’ – the first case I can find in the historical record of an interpreter being needed wasn’t to help a signer (who was quite happy to write messages) – it was to help the non-signing hearing people who were illiterate and so couldn’t read the message!
But, yes – it appears that there is a direct ‘need’ relationship embedded in the interpreter/client relationship.
And given that Oralism, after all, was/is less about things ‘oral’ than it was/is about the discourses of control and capability that are woven around the Deaf community, the relationship of ‘need’, causes me all kinds of questions.
And all of this is why, I think it’s fair to ask the question about Oralism and Interpreting… not because interpreters are a ‘problem’… rather, they are the best place to start, for three main reasons.
- Interpreters are one of the professions working in a ‘need’ dynamic with the Deaf community… and so will be impacted by the type of technology that an SL translation app (sorry for my unashamed use of the shortening *wink*) offers… So discussing the impact that technology like that might have is a way of exploring the larger social questions that MB outlines in her post.
- Interpreters generally do have the level of reflexivity that MB (and Austin’s paper) demonstrate. They see, and tread, the line between empowering and disempowering ‘need’ on a daily basis. So discussing this with them is immediately meaningful in a way that it might not be for, say, a more ‘unthinking’ Deaf-related industry – like audiology.
- Interpreters are, almost all, deeply knowledgeable about the Deaf community and deeply committed to the community as people – and to the community’s empowerment. At the same time, they juggle with their own jobs and responsibilities. So, ultimately, they’re going to be looking to resolve questions like these in ways that are empowering to both sides. I can’t think of a better place to start a discussion about something as emotive and as historically difficult as Oralism.
Much of my work hinges on explorations of possibility, tied to imagined realities – so I wonder if it’s possible to run a thought experiment, and imagine that the SL translation App does actually work – and think about what might happen next *grins*.
What happens if the SL recognition app works? March 13, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: Interpreters, Oralism, Sign Language Translation
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There’s been a lot of chat in the Deaf-related press in the last couple of days about the announcement that an app is going to be developed that will allow a simple camera-equipped smart phone to ‘translate sign language into text’.
You can find one of the many reports at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9134827/Sign-language-program-converts-hand-movements-into-text.html
Lots of the discussion about the article is understandably skeptical, with some wondering whether this is another one of those projects where a hearing group of researchers think they have discovered something that is going to ‘save’ the Deaf community, but have actually only found a way to capture very slow finger spelling that would be quicker to write out with a pencil.
Some of this appears to be driven by a sentiment of “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that” and the consequent “Well, poo to you if you have managed to solve the problem” that you might expect.
I wonder if some of the latter is emerging from an acknowledgment that we are now reaching the point where more powerful computing probably will let us actually approach the kind of recognition app that is being discussed.
Which raises another interesting question. When (not if) we actually get an app, or a solution that really works, what are interpreters going to do?
At the moment, interpreters occupy a somewhat problematic space… they providing a service that is crucial to both the Deaf community and the hearing world, but it’s a service that an app like this would begin to make unnecessary – and one that could potentially outlive its utility even within our present generation.
At that point, do interpreters pack up and find something else to do? Or do they do what those employed around the Deaf community (with far less laudable morals than today’s interpreters) have sometimes done and carry on making a case for their involvement even if it’s no longer valid?
Let me be clear – I’ve not got a downer on interpreters. I used to be one – and I acknowledge that they are all different, work differently and are differently appreciated by the Deaf community. Most, if not all, have a very clear understanding of their relationship with the Deaf community, aware of the drivers of empowerment and need, and wrestle with the difficulties of reconciling those.
So… to repeat – I’m not targeting interpreters.
But I am interested in what happens when people (with all of their hopes and dreams, responsibilities and priorities, politics and pressures) find themselves challenged by a piece of technology that is utterly, and determinedly uninterested in the impact that it has.
Historically – those earning money by providing a service to the Deaf community haven’t always behaved very honorably when presented with the possibility of losing their employment.
One of my students last year wrote an essay which wondered whether the dis-empowering aspects of Oralism (self-interest, wages, paternalism etc.) are still present in today’s Deaf services… and whether, if prodded in the right direction, they could lead to the emergence of some form of neo-Oralism where ‘need’ is created to serve those who stand to benefit.
I’m not saying that it’s going to happen, but perhaps it’s something that bears thinking about before it actually becomes an issue?
PhD opportunites at SOAS January 24, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.5 comments
Apologies for the ragged formatting of this – it’s just a post to display the information that I don’t have space to tweet.
SOAS have a growing interest in SL linguistics – apparently.
– post –
The Department of Linguistics at SOAS is pleased to announce the availability of several (partial or full) scholarships for students wishing to undertake PhD research. (more…)
Reinforcements… and an interesting challenge January 19, 2012
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: careers, development, mentoring, sustainability., training
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With Christmas intervening – and then a frantic new year of catching up, I’m only just getting to the point now where I can come back to the blog.
And I do so with news… I have reinforcements 
In the last week, the long awaited replacement Client Support Officer has started at work. The hope is that… in time… he will learn to do everything that I’ve been doing, and effectively replace me – freeing me up to do other (and more interesting) things.
His arrival has, however, brought an interesting challenge to light – which is the amount of time and effort that it takes to effectively train and mentor someone.
This is a challenge that I suffered from… from the other end – as a PhD student. (more…)
Whoops… and I’m back December 12, 2011
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.2 comments
Dear all,
One good thing about only posting sporadically to this blog is that, when I disappear for a few days, no-one worries.
The last few days of absence were, unfortunately, a bit more serious than me just being busy.
I fell off my bike on the 28th November into the path of a Ford Focus, which then drove over me.
Somewhat miraculously – having spent a few harrowing moments staring at the underside of the engine… and then a few uncomfortable days getting the use of my ribs back, less than a couple of weeks later, I’m back at work…
Thanks to all who have expressed good wishes.
I’ve had a good think about priorities in the time off, and while nothing has changed particularly, I’m even more determined to make sure that I don’t simply drift – ticking off years of time without actually getting back to the heart of what I want to do.
My friend Austin Kocher recently wondered… “Is there anything more exciting than learning something new?”
I don’t think there is… unless, perhaps when that learning then takes you to passing on that knowledge to others and seeing them also learn it, engage with it, and then take ownership of it, and start to move it in new directions.
Research, writing, dissemination, collaboration, exploration, discovery.
Love it
AAG 2012 session details and content November 24, 2011
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: AAG 2012
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The AAG 2012 schedule has been released, and the information on each of the Deaf Geographies sessions is available at the following URLS.
Monday 27th February.
12.40 – 2.20: Deaf Geographies I – Foundations for Deaf Geographies
2.40 -4.20: Deaf Geographies II – Analyzing Deaf Geographies
4.40 – 6.20: Deaf Geographies III -The Future of Deaf Geographies
If last year is anything to go by, the wealth of information and research will be amazing, and I’ll be so excited by the end I’ll barely be able to sleep.
I’m presenting in the first session, so lots of time to kick back afterwards, relax and listen.
I *am* going to New York November 16, 2011
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: balance, funding, leverage, NYC
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Amazing what securing a tiny bit of funding does in leveraging more. Maybe it’s about the credibility that it lends to your project.
Having secured the conference fees from the AAG, I’ve now been told that work are going to contribute something to get me to New York. This is wonderful news, particularly since part of the ‘new vision’ that I described yesterday requires me to develop a way to hold in (tension is the wrong word, it suggests that there is a tension… maybe balance would be a better one) balance the two roles that I currently play within the University (IT services and Academic) and, if possible, work them together.
Unless the university adopts a revolutionary new approach to many things (I can’t, for example, be a member of academic staff and support staff – different pay grades and structures and different rules on what each can do apply), one of the only ways to constructively bridge the two areas is to present ideas that do just that, at fora like the AAG.
Last night, upon hearing the news that I’d got partial funding, and some more on the way *fingers crossed*, I got the go ahead from home to attend – no small grace when it involves leaving Jo at home with a (will be then 23 month old) toddler for a week on her own.
Big Apple – here I come
