Digital solution to age-old dilemma (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

I think it would be swell if we could all participate in a project like this!
  
Easy Question: what it would take to mobilize language content for mobile
devices?
It seems it just a matter of time (& effort) before mobile devices will 
be able
to access & transmit native language content (here in North America) via
teacher-to-learner, learner-to-learner.  It is interesting, maybe
facinating(?), that media rich devices like the iPhone or iPod Touch (and many
others) can effectively handle film-based media, audio and 
interactivity.  But
when you look at the software roster, nothing but games and other trivial
interactive content.  What we need is an IPA-capable note pad for language
content note taking...also, we need transferablity (or interpolability) from
established software to mobile devices (much like the Kirrkir example) to
access organized native language data.  We need mobile-device enabled films
and other visual media-rich language content.  Good-bye military hand-helds.
  
Of course (upon reflection) all of this is based on the thesis of a digital
transformation of language/culture and the creation of a network society. 
Call it a hyper-reality floating beyond face-to-face language if you will. 
The question often asked is "will we (native language speech communities) come
to accept our media-saturated lives" as a common everyday experience? 
  Sounds
like a design-ethnography project...
*Can you hear me now (said in the native language)?*
My favorite media clip and one floating around the internet (recv'd from folks
in OZ) was a link to a short commercial showing an aboriginal elder, upon
hearing a bull-roarer out in the outback, stands up on a rock and starts to
swing his own bull roarer in answer.  The bull roarer breaks and flys off to
hit an elderly lady drinking at a water hole.  The end point is the question,
something like "There's got to be a better way." 
Just a few thoughts today...
Phil Cash Cash
UofA
Quoting phil cash cash :

> Digital solution to age-old dilemma
>
> December 19, 2008
> Australia
>
> IN THE most remote parts of Australia, one computer can be shared between 100
> people, with only a handful knowing how to turn it on.
>
> But even there, says a University of Sydney linguist, Aidan Wilson, there are
> "thousands of mobile phones".
>
> That's why Mr Wilson and his colleagues at the university's Pacific 
> And Regional
> Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures hope their 
> indigenous mobile
> phone dictionary will be a hit.
>
> It is based on Kirrkirr, an interactive dictionary developed at the 
> university
> that shows not only the meanings but also how words are connected to others.
>
> Access full article below:
>
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/digital-solution-to-ageold-dilemma/2008/12/18/1229189804505.html


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