[extropy-chat] hear everything: CNN features amazing user withautism

[pjmanney]

Spike wrote:
>If you close your eyes and listen carefully, you might be surprised at how
>much information can be gathered with sound alone.  Put on a pair of hard
>soled shoes, then walk around listening for the echo of sound bouncing off
>of a vertical surface.  You will eventually see how it is that blind people
>manage to navigate without sight. 

John M. Hull writes eloquently on this subject in the highly recommended "On Sight and Insight" (formerly "Touching the Rock").  The audible world creates an acoustic map, born of activity.  Without activity and its motion, movement, vibration... sound, the world disappears, unlike the visible world, which to the sighted is continuous.  Things pass into and out of existence, regardless of their location in space, by virtue of stillness.  "People are not there unless they speak."  And the blind person has no power over the exploration of things.  S/he is passive.  The sound either occurs or doesn't, with no influence from them.

Hull relishes the wind, because it creates an acoustic map of all it passes over: trees, houses, shrubs, powerlines, etc.  On still days, these things disappear, unless brought into movement through other means.  (This reminds me of the famous Oliver Sacks story of the woman with an aphasia who could not feel she had a body until the wind lightly blew over it in a continuous process, propped up in an open convertible car.)

He also notes, since "the world of blind people is more ephemeral, since sounds come and go," the blind live in time, unlike the deaf, who live in visual space.  A blind person paces out their world by a steady, constant beat of footsteps.  Like following a piece of music, they time their movements through the world.  "Space is reduced to one's own body, and the position of the body is known not by what objects have been passed but by how long it has been in motion.  Position is thus measured by time."

PJ