Rosetta Stone

Thu Dec 13 01:21:33 UTC 2007

I have a story to share. But first, let me build a little context. 

For as long as I have been doing this, there has been lots of to-ing and
fro-ing about technology, and in our case, language revitalization. And
there has been also some to-ing and fro-ing on revitalization pedagogies.
And of course, dollars, where they come from, who gets them, how they are
used. Arguments rage on; in some cases, very little happens as they rage. 

Now that everyone has the context, let me tell you what happened, and of
course, how I saw it . . . :-) maybe it will bring some ideas into focus. 

On Monday, one of our professors went to the neighboring town, 25.5 miles
away, to give the final exam for his class. It was a dark and
snowy-rainy-wintry night. He gave his final, and 2 people saw him leave for
home. On Tuesday, he hadn't made it, and people were worried; they were
spreading the word, looking for him. Last year, one of his friends, also a
friend of mine, was helping him with a car incident. I said, Why don't you
call him? My friend said, He doesn't have a cell. 

So into the dark and stormy night - and I can tell you it was truly
miserable: rain, sleet; snow; and, unrelenting cold - this man drove. There
is a turn several - but not many - miles out of town, where one either goes
up the mountain to Tsaile, and the warmth of the home fire - kuhgą - or
follows the south rim of Canyon de Chelly. The two terrains are vastly
different, one leading up the mountain, on paved road, with a few lights and
homes, the other leading down, past the Inn, into the canyon. 

His car was found almost 8 miles along the rim highway, at the place where
the paved road turns to dirt. His body was found a short ways from his car.
The police think he died of exposure. This man had made a personal decision,
not to have a cell phone. Can we challenge his right to make a personal
decision not to adopt a technology that could have saved his life?  I wonder
if he would make a different decision today than he had a week ago, and the
year before that, and the decade before that. Would his family encourage him
to make a different decision today? 

Part of the problem with the passage of life is that sometimes, you can't go
back and do it over. Sometimes, it seems to me, the risks of being wrong
outweigh individual feelings and perspectives. It seems to me. 

I chose Rosalyn's email, of all the possible choices, to share this little
story over, because I absolutely agree with her premise. I think that the
bulk of the money Should go into the community, to develop people who can
make more materials For the Community. In Ndn communities, "workforce
development," even in the world of burgeoning technology, still means
pipefitters and dental hygienists. Do we need people with these skills?
Absolutely. Should "workforce development" be limited to this options?
Absolutely not. 

Developing technology takes time, skill, and money in dynamic relationship.
But if Tribes hire outside companies, no matter who they are, and abrogate
their right and their responsibility to participate in their own
advancement, or in this case, cultural and linguistic revitalization, where
will they be when the money is gone and they need more materials? How will
they pass the skills along? What about the pedagogical issues that Phil and
Andre and others have brought up? Technology is not "easy" . . .  but then,
the people who lived here before Columbus arrived mastered pretty amazing
technology (Petroglyph Calendars, mounds square to fractions of a degree;
nautical navigation; sophisticated animal husbandry and plant genetics; sun
daggers; and, my personal favorite, Chaco Canyon) so there isn't any reason
why their descendants can't master a little simple computer technology.
After all, graphics, sounds, language, and sophisticated knowledge
representations are all in the blood. 

So I would like to end with Kaddish for my colleague, an ancient prayer. It
will not save him, but merely send good wishes for his path. Would
technology have saved him? I don't know. But the "Maybe it would have"
haunts me, because here, we are sharing the tears of loss, of a pain too
unexplained for words. When we lost Emmanuel, we lost his language, and the
complex web of knowledge that made his language - his ideolect - his own. Is
it really so different from what we fight for every day? 

Mia 

  _____  

From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Rrlapier at AOL.COM
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 2:30 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Rosetta Stone

I have read ANA language grants for several years. In the last couple of
years I have noticed more and more efforts to document language using
technologies from outside of the community. Oftentimes the community does
not articulate how they will incorporate these technologies into their whole
language revitalization strategy or how it will build their community
capcity.

Rosetta Stone is one of those companies. In most cases the community knew
very very little about the company (they would attach a brochure to their
application) and so their grant would basically be asking for 90% to cover
the cost of RS and 10% for at home. The question I always asked to the
applicant is to show how this is "community capacity building" -- if all the
dollars leave the community?

I think tribes need to be proactive and require companies like RS to put
most of the dollars back into the community, by training technicians,
language specialists, etc. Tribes need to make this relationship a
partnership.

Rosalyn LaPier

Piegan Institute

In a message dated 12/12/2007 12:14:46 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,
andrekar at NCIDC.ORG writes:

The arguments against Rosetta stone remind me of the complaints I  
have heard about the Phrasealator.  Why do we need to pay so much  
money, people are just trying to get rich.

I agree in a perfect world the items to help tribes recover and  
preserve their languages would be free to them (either through  
generosity, grants or other subsidy), but alas we are in less than a  
perfect world.  The next best thing is to find out what works best  
(program, sytem, software, etc) regardless of costs and then work  
like the devil to get the costs covered.  The paramount objective is  
preservation of my language.  Profiteers have to face their music  
when creator chooses.

On Dec 10, 2007, at 5:19 PM, Mia Kalish wrote:

What a lovely response, Don. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives and the
thoughts that they engendered. And most of us have seen all of this,  
yes?
By the way, a very nice lady from Rosetta Stone is on this list - or she
used to be. Their technology is a lot like the technology we put  
together
and researched. It is not exact; I don't want anyone to infer that I am
implying any misbehavior on anyone's part. The point I want to make  
is that
presenting the visual, the sound and the text simultaneously in what  
we did
was 78% effective Across populations - that was, people who had heard  
Apache
but were either not fluent or not literate, and people who had never  
been
exposed to Apache ever. "Across populations" is a statistical  
characteristic
that says that the populations are so alike they can be analyzed as a  
single
group. This is rare in pedagogies.
As for the publicity . . . Rosetta Stone advertises on television.  
They have
lots of languages. I've lost track of how many. Publicity tells people
what's happening. It tells People what Other People think is important.
Right now, in New Mexico, there is a huge "DWI Blitz" (You drink; you  
drive;
you lose.) This is telling people who drive that people are taking  
driving
sober very seriously. And there are lots of billboards talking about  
DWI;
it's in the papers, on the news. Now, is this a current issue in a  
lot of
state? No-o-o-o-o-o. But, my point here is that Publicity is how you let
people know what others are thinking. I saw another sign today, "Ron  
Paul
for President . . . A new view" and I thought, Who is Ron Paul? There  
was
just one sign, and I couldn't connect it to anything else I had seen or
heard. One sign won't get me to vote for Ron Paul for president, but  
many,
many signs will get a lot of drunk drivers off the road, and will change
attitudes.
So maybe all the publicity for Rosetta Stone will start to change  
attitudes
about what is important about People. For a long time, there has been  
the
"white ruling class" and everyone else. Like Don pointed out, there  
hasn't
been much real knowledge about "everyone else." I am so happy to see  
even
the little bits of beginnings where we start to know about Everyone  
Else,
even the Everyone Elses of us :-)

Thanks Don,
Really, really good piece - I think,
Mia

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology  
[mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Don Osborn
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:53 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Rosetta Stone

As I look at this thread several thoughts occur. One is Robert Chambers'
discussion of "positive practitioners" and "negative academics" in
international development. The former try to do something, whatever the
agenda, and sometimes ineptly. The latter critique, sometimes  
insightfully
and incisively and sometimes less so. That is not to say that one is  
right
and the other wrong, but that in some ways they are like two different
cultures.

Jess Tauber is right to point out the ironies in the historical  
sweep. The
same dominant culture that via education and technology tried to wipe  
out
languages or systematically marginalize them (not just in the  
Americas), now
is in part (at least the parts you see) trying to save them. It is  
natural
to ask why.

Part of it is the dynamic of power. I've noted - again in international
development - that the people in positions to do so end up occupying or
pre-empting both sides (or all positions) in many debates. Even about  
the
nature of a people themselves. This was particularly striking in several
decades of debates on pastoralism in Africa - an evolution of two  
opposing
views on the rationality or not of transhumant (semi-nomadic)  
herding. An
evolving debate entirely outside of the cultures discussed, with  
indirect
and imperfect references to the herders' knowledge systems, and in terms
totally outside pastoralists' languages, and totally immersed in Western
terms of reference.

I see a little of this in discussions on languages and on languages &
technology.

In part, this dynamic of power is just that way, like the wind just  
blows.
It shifts too, and you can find a way to explain it, but in the end  
how do
you protect yourself from it and better yet use its force to some  
advantage?

So, on one level, Jess's generalizing about "they" responds to a real  
set of
issues. However on another level it seems to blur some realities.

When looking at the specific case of companies like Rosetta Stone (or  
for
that matter bigger technology companies) part of what one must  
appreciate is
the nature of the beast and the environment it is working in. The bottom
line and survival in that environment is money. How to get it can raise
issues, but without it, *poof*. James's suspicion is natural, but with a
company, what else is new?

But even that is more complex. I resist reifying the notion of  
corporation
too far to the point of overlooking the agency of people in  
organizations
like Rosetta Stone, who may be very sincerely devoted to somehow  
changing
the world for better. The latter may end up being the "positive
practitioners" per Chambers' dichotomy, with their more or less  
imperfect
human (and culturally bound) understanding of what they are dealing  
with -
and their own environment to survive in.

>From what little I know of Rosetta Stone I see it as a business that  
is at
least trying to do something. It's making good money, apparently, in  
general
language learning with a product that has positive reviews. It's  
stepping
outside of that market in an interesting way. Of course they are  
milking it
for publicity too, but again, that is the nature of companies. I  
don't know
enough about the program, its approach or results to judge it, but I'm
absolutely not surprised if there are limits in terms of what they  
spend on
it (anything has limits).

Let me finish with another technology example. A company named Lancor  
just
sued the One Laptop Per Child project for alleged use of codes in a  
patented
keyboard. The object of both keyboards is to facilitate input of  
"extended
Latin characters" and diacritics for West African languages. I don't  
know
the technical or patent issues well enough, but whatever the merits  
of the
case may or may not be, the ultimate victims will be people who might  
have
been able to use the technology sooner for their languages.

The collateral damage to common aims from disputes over methods can be
considerable, and avoidable to the extent one accepts that everyone has
honorable intent. (Maybe a key question is how to establish the  
latter and a
sense of trust.)

I'd agree with Mia's bottom line conclusion that someone has to do  
it. If
you start subtracting potential partners from the equation, are you  
better
off?

Don Osborn

  _____  

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