Darice de Cuba

We are nearing our tenth year in the 21st century, a year which saw technology take huge leaps. One of the main targets of technology is communication advancement. Today we are able to communicate with each other through many mediums, just to sum up a few:

• mobile phone
• chat program
• skype
• email
• twitter

Technology is here to facilitate all kinds of needs we humans have. I love reading books so much I don’t have rooms anymore to store them, so an e-book reader is one of the gadgets on my wish list. I want to be able to check my email any time anywhere so I own an iPhone. Which added plus that it has a camera and possibility for many photo apps to satisfy my photo needs. Just to give some examples.

But yet while mankind makes light speed progress with technology most of us don’t progress with these technology. Most of all on the communication front of technology.

As someone who is hearing impaired(deaf) I treasure technology even more. Before losing my hearing I had digital hearing aids that could be precisely programmed to suit my hearing. It had more then one settings so I could chose “Music” or “Loudy Enviroment” etc. Then I lost my hearing which is not nice but all isn’t lost, thanks to internet and computers. I can still communicate with everyone through email, chat programs, etc.

As I work in the internet/technology field(website development) it shouldn’t be a major issue either. It’s not like I’m a teacher in front of the class or a lawyer standing everyday in court. But to my surprise it’s in this area that I find a lot of resistance to me being deaf.

I have been applying to jobs lately and most ask for strong communicative skills. To me this means to being able to clearly express what you mean, to be able to “listen” to others and work well in team. But a majority of the companies who call them self experts in technology and internet understand only one thing under communicative skill, to be able to hear. I once applied for the job of web developer which entailed “get psd design, code the front end, integrate it with cms and other server side coding”. I got a rejection email stating that they consider me being deaf an impairment in communication so I’m not suited for the position.

To me it sounded like “sorry but you are deaf, we don’t see how you can sit and code css/xhtml and php for us everyday”.

These experiences the last few months really made me wonder how can people really appreciate all these communication technology if they expect you to be able to hear them talk or to be on location all the time. The Queen of the Netherlands Kingdom made an end of the year speech criticizing technology for making people too independent and distanced.

Well it is thanks to the progress of the last few years like unlimited broadband internet, with chat programs and applications like Facebook and Flickr that I can keep in touch with family and friends all over the world. Because unlike the Queen I can’t afford to take a trans Atlantic flight every year to see my family and friends back home. It’s thanks to technology that I can reach my doctors myself with my personal questions instead of having someone call for me.

Another argument I come across online a lot is that you can easily miss interpret the meaning of what someone is saying in an email or chat. That is true to certain level. Most people when writing emails don’t take the time to formulate well what they mean nor write in correct sentences or use paragraphs. Mostly when I get emails it’s just one huge block of text. Wrong use of exclamation mark is a huge issue in emails. If people where conscious of how they write down what they mean a lot of miss understanding can be adverted.

Everyone wants to boast they have the latest gadgets, their company is on top of newest advancement, etc. But are they truly? Do they take profit of the technologies to reach everyone?

As an entrepreneur, a company or a weblogger ask yourself these questions:

• Can the sight impaired people “read” my content?
• Can the hearing impaired follow my podcast?
• Do I refrain from hiring impaired people even though their impairment can be helped with technology?

You will only truly appreciate what technology offers when you acknowledge how it really helps us all. In everyday life, on the medical area(think about MRI scans, surgery robots), etc, etc. With my netbook and my tethered enabled iPhone I can be everywhere and be available to chat, webcam, email or work. All thanks to technology.

The Jedi didn’t send Luke Skywalker home after he lost his hand didn’t they? They gave him a mechanical hand.

When the first generation iPhone came out in the United States on June 29 2007 it became the most wanted gadget world wide. But the rest of the world had to wait to be able to buy through official ways. This brought on a big market on ebay and all kind of shady websites to sell locked iPhones for huge prices. It wasn’t long before in the Netherlands iPhones started to make an appearance, people who managed to buy one and jailbreak it to use it with their current mobile account.

I remember considering doing the same but really didn’t want to take the risk of buying one and then having it breakdown and not be able to use the warranty. In any case the few who had the first generation iPhone where mostly tech savvy people considering you needed to know how or know someone who could jailbreak the phone for use. For one year the first generation iPhone was a status item in the Netherlands.

Then in the summer of 2008 T-Mobile started selling the 3G iPhone as an official Apple reseller. On launch day it was craziness of long lines at every T-Mobile store, everyone and their grandmother standing inline to be one of the first to buy the 3G iPhone. Due to lot of things not going smooth right away I waited until fall when my contract with T-Mobile was up for renewal to get an iPhone.

The iPhone went from an exclusive gadget to a an everybody gadget. People bought the iPhone which comes at a minimum with a 2 year contract starting at 30 euros a month. They didn’t even know right what the iPhone could do or not. I remember a colleague arguing with me that “yes the iPhone 3G can record video, of course it can”. And I was seriously dude it can only take photos.

People bought the iPhone just because it was/is an wanna have gadget, most will know their way around and get it under the knee. But most will just use it as a phone/sms/ipod and a few popular apps like Facebook, train info(Trein). But the advanced options like syncing your Google Calendar, iCal and such will go unused, most don’t know to turn off data roaming when abroad consequently getting bills of 500 euros.

So now you could say there are different levels of iPhone users:

• the casual user (phone, sms, ipod, maybe email and few apps and games apps)
• the business user (phone, sms, (multiple)email, calendar and and few apps)
• the power user(phone, sms, (multiple)email, calendar, tethering, lots of apps like twitter(some more hen one twitter app), facebook, wordpress, as of recently dropbox, feed readers, Ego, Airme, Camerabag, Flickr, etc.) Note I don’t mention iPod because most power user have an iPod also.

Off course not everyone is a fan of the iPhone. Just like the Windows/Apple war you now have the Blackberry/iPhone “which one is better” war. Here in the Netherlands the iPhone came out first and then the Blackberry. There are iPhone users who switched to Blackberry and there are those gadgets fan who now own both. As for me the only pro I saw in the Blackberry was the ping system. But as of recently the iPhone has it’s own ping app. It’s a no contest really; the touch screen, the huge amount of available apps and the eye candy of most apps. This makes it a no brainer, for me anyway.

The general notion is that since the introduction of the iPod and now the iPhone Apple went from a small “exclusive” user base to a wanna have products to the general public. For Apple this is good because it means more income. For the ones who are using Apple before it became a wanna have it means patience.

Last I was standing in the Apple store waiting to be helped, I had to wait half an hour while the store guy kept answering question after question about the iMac before the guy decided to buy the thing. Core Apple users know their stuff but now with a broader base of users you’ll have to pack an extra dosis of patience before going to an Apple store.