Phraselator

[Richard Smith]

Rudy, 
these are really good points you bring up

Technology for all its promise has an edge,
A side we must be watchful of.
For all their promise, these kind of technologies
might actually impregnate cultures forming a hard-edged
gold-standard, to measure cultural "correctness"
Our Cultural committees need to be aware of this darker side
since we know a healthy living culture has motion.
Flux is not only important but essential for life.

Everything has its seasons
This Hi-tech age we live in now will have its season.
Who will hear these CDs when there is no way to play them?

Our current technological age is only a  mere speck
(maybe just an interruption) on thousands upon thousands of years
Of continual earth-based circle societies.
If we are truly working towards the 7th generation,
We must prepare ourselves for the possibility that these generations
May not be so "fortunate" to have these oil-driven technologies
And gadgets that we take for granted as normal living.
>From this moment of time,maybe they seem everlasting.
We can easily live as if there will always be a Walmart,
oil-based asphalt to repair highways,plastics and computers,
But its an untested unproven belief in human intelligence.

I suggest we look further
Even beyond our children's children's children...
And realistically use these now-tools to shore up a generation
That may not even have the luxury of remembering them.
Because we were all born during an age of technological advancement
Its almost automatic for us to assume this will always be real.
Will our indigenous societies survive to
outlive this current "technological interruption?"
I think this should be the goal of all of us
Who are working hard for the survival of our nations.

Richards Zane Smith
Wyandotte, Oklahoma



On 9/4/06 1:09 AM, "Rudy Troike" <rtroike at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:

> Once again the White Man is ripping off Indian tribes by flim-flamming them
> with the idea that their languages can be preserved by recording the
> equivalent
> of a phrase-book on a high-tech hand-held device. These devices are obviously
> useful in situations where there is no common language for communication, and
> where communication usually consists of a fairly predictable and restricted
> number of expressions (customizable for, e.g., house-to-house searches for
> terrorists or surgeons in a field hospital trying to save Lebanese children
> brutally injured by Israeli cluster bombs). However, a good way to test the
> utility of the device in a community setting would be to use one, set up with
> another well-documented language such as Spanish, and have someone who knows
> Spanish use it to simulate conversation with other community members in
> English.
> My guess is that patience would quickly wear thin with the person looking up
> the Spanish phrase or sentence in order to produce the appropriate English
> expression. If there were Cherokee speakers who knew no English, the device
> could come in handy if a doctor in an emergency room had to communicate with
> them, but it is difficult to imagine English-only grandchildren having long
> conversations with their Cherokee-only grandparents (if many exist). Even
> granted the possible utility of the device in emergency situations, the
> wide-spread adoption of it might actually hasten language death by leading
> people to think that this would relieve them of the tedium and effort of
> actually learning the language -- just like telling students in school that
> they no longer need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide since
> their calculators will do all of that drudgework for them (fine until the
> batteries run out, or the wiring goes screwy and produces inaccurate results
> -- as I've seen happen -- and could not be checked).
> 
>     Rudy Troike