I can help in the fight against terrorism.

        I'm capable of telling how sensitive metal detectors are simply by walking through them. Embedded in my skull is a piece of technology, shaped somewhat like a sperm, only with a nearly rectangular oval head. It contains a metallic disk the size of a nickel. Theoretically, when I walk through a metal detector, such as the ones at the airport, it should beep at me. I have a card that describes the implant and its effects. I have to carry it when I go places where I can expect to go through metal detectors. That way, security can simply use a wand to confirm that the unseen metal is localized just behind my left ear. As far as I can recall, only the metal detector at LAX airport has beeped at me. Neither the detectors at Rochester, New York, or Chicago O'Hare, nor DFW have beeped at me, except on perhaps one or two incidents. Before panic ensues, let me state that this is before 9/11. Post 9/11... well, I've only flown once, to Chicago and back. Lost my girlfriend there, but no beeping. There wasn't that much beeping between my girlfriend and I either, but that's an entirely different matter. The point is, I have a piece of fairly advanced, seminally-shaped, technology nestled in the top layer of my skull bone. Once something is identified as technology, the question begs to be asked, "What does it do?" The simple answer is: it's technology to help me hear. In the days of the Ancient Greeks, I'd be left out on the hillside to die from exposure, since I would have been useless to society. Nowadays, I'm capable of functioning in hearing society, thanks in part to technology. More importantly, at least to me, I'm capable of enjoying hearing society thanks to the technological boom that happened after the 1980's.

HEARING AIDS

        Before I consented to have a doctor drill a hole into my skull, I used hearing aids. Mine were of the "behind the ear" category. There's a number of categories: behind the ear, in the ear, in the ear canal, and vibratory hearing aids. Behind the ear is probably the stereotypical hearing aid that people imagine when they hear the term "hearing aid." At least in contemporary times. I'm sure that other generations have their own mental image- such as a box with strings going to the ears. I used to have that sort of hearing aid when I was very young. If anyone is thinking of a big horn that people hold to their ears, then that person's dead, since that's the Victorian hearing aid.

        Some hearing aid users also use a variety of devices that work in conjunction with their hearing aids. I know of one such system called an FM system. It consists of a processor connected to a silvery loop worn around the neck. The main reason I used it was as a way of gaining better and more specific amplification. A teacher would use a microphone connected to a processor. The microphone would pick up the teacher's voice, and the voice would be transmitted to my processor via FM waves, then to the silvery loop which transmitted the mike pickup to my hearing aids, thereby cutting out a lot of the extraneous classroom noise. I used this briefly in Junior High. I felt embarrassed by it. Junior High's bad enough without setting yourself even more apart from the rest of your classmates. In elementary school, the school district provided deaf students with "auditory trainers" which were basically box hearing aids with microphones. The concept was the same as with the FM system I used later on: a means to provide a direct auditory connection to the teacher. "Auditory trainers." The name was perfectly innocent to me back then, but now it has an insidious connotation to me. It depends on where one stands. In any case, we strapped those brown electronic boxes on, plugged up our ears, handed the teacher a microphone, and listened.

        And now, I have an cochlear implant. by using a string of electrodes as a substitute for my useless cochlea. Hence its name, a cochlear implant. I figure it's a reasonable facsimile, but I can't say for sure since I was born deaf. I can say it's better than hearing aids. Still, I haven't upgraded my speech processor, which converts sound into electrical impulses that are then fed into the implant. My current model is about seven years old. I don't mind it so far. Upgrading's expensive, but that's a fact of technology. It works, at least.

ENTERTAINMENT

        When I was a kid, the only TV I could enjoy were cartoons. Most of them generally were slapsticky enough for me to get a laugh, without needing to follow the story. In fact, it probably encouraged my imagination more. Who is that guy? Is he a good guy or bad guy? What do they want? Ah, the bad guy wants that glowy ruby. It must be magical since it glows like that. I also gained an affection for Charlie Chaplin since all the dialogue was flashed on the screen on cards. When I was about six or seven, my parents shelled out a couple hundred bucks at Sears to buy a new device called a "closed captioning decoder." Now I could see what the residents at Sesame Street were talking about. In the beginning, most kiddie educational programs were closed captioned. A few movies on HBO and a few shows on the Disney Channel were closed captioned as well. There were still shows I couldn't enjoy. Old movies were not accessible to me. If it was black and white, it sure as hell wouldn't be closed captioned, unless it was really really old, i.e. silent movies. As each new TV season began, more new shows were cced. Older tv shows being kept alive in syndication gradually became cced. Now I can laugh at the repartee between Hawkeye and Trapper John (or B.J. as the case might be).

        Movies on videocassette followed a similar gradual process as TV. At first, some new movies were cced, then all of them were. Older movies released before the advent of CC weren't closed captioned, and if I were interested in seeing a oldie but goodie, such as Citizen Kane, I'd just have to wait for the possible re-issue onto videotape, which indeed occurred for its fiftieth anniversary. Old movies on TV rarely were cced until in the last decades, probably due to specialized channels such as BRAVO, TCM and AMC, et al.

        Cue the 2001: A Space Odyssey music (aka Also Sprach Zarustha), only instead of the black Monolith, the Digital Video Disc rises into view. DVDs have become another means for older TV shows and movies to be reissued with cc, or subtitling.

        All of this is on the television screen in my home. What of the first stage of Hollywood's invasion- the cinema? Well, there is a sort of closed-captioning for movies, but there's several modes. Open-captioning, (OC), is essentially english subtitles for an English speaking film. Earlier, it'd be expensive, quite cost prohibitive, really; but it was done. Today, Insight Cinema is the largest nationwide supplier of OC movies. They have a cheap method, in which subtitles are created by burning off the emulsion layers of the film negative. Presto- white text on the movie screen. It has its drawbacks, though. Austin Powers indirectly spoofed this hilariously in "Goldmember" by showing how text disappears on white backgrounds. The solution to that would be to add shadowing, but then you start running the costs up. It's still expensive- only a limited number of films are OC, and they're distributed on a limited schedule. An OC movie tends to only play at a theater for 3 days before moving onto another city.

        As technology continues to grow, new methods are used for captioning. A fairly recent innovation is RCS- Rearview Captioning System. Newer movie theaters have begun to have this built into some of their theaters. It's not actually new tech, it's old tech used in a new way. Quite simply, the set up consists of an electronic scroll bar, much like a LED stock ticker, mounted on the rear wall of the theater. A hearing impaired customer requests an accessory which either is an actual wide rearview mirror, or a large rectangular dark tinted plastic, mounted on a bendable spine attached to a circular weight. The weight goes into a cupholder, and the moviegoer adjusts the spine so they can see the reflection of the scroll bar from the rear. As the movie plays, dialogue is flashed, rather than scrolled, and the letters are in reverse so their reflections are readable.

        Movie theaters also have been offering assistive hearing devices, much like FM systems, to customers who have a difficult time distinguishing dialogue from environmental sound, in the movie and in the actual movie theater. In that way, technology begins to work in a complementary way. Of course, there's always low tech: having an interpreter with you, or read the book or novelization before seeing the movie.

COMMUNICATIONS

        In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent the early telephone. He helped contribute to the gap between deaf people and hearing people, by introducing a specifically aural device which most deaf people can't use. Ironically, Bell worked with deaf people, and he was an admirer of Helen Keller. Still, he isn't an benevolent figure in deaf culture, since his goal was to transform deaf people into hearing people, as much as it was possible.

        While distant friends could remain in touch over the phone, deaf people had to get in their cars and drive to see the friend. The friend might not even be at home at that time! In comes technology, with devices created to help deaf people use the phone.

        The major device used today is a TTY. The TTY operates using preset tones, which have equivalent characters. Early TTYs required a handset to be placed on TTYs, much like early modems. Typing on the keyboard of the TTY sends a series of tones through the phoneline, and the TTY at the other end of the telephone line converts the tones back into letters on the display of the TTY. Just as telephones increased their functions, TTYs have done the same. Conversations can be printed out on TTYs, and they can be set to answer a phone and send a prerecorded message take messages, among other functions. The TTY itself changes, with increased memory, LCD screens as opposed to the standard green LED display. Phone jacks are built in so there's no longer any need to find a circular phone handset that can fit in the phonerest to use a TTY. Other TTYs act like a combination phone/TTY, allowing hearing people and deaf people to use the same device in their own fashion.

        Other devices are available, such as amplifiers to help hearing impaired people, and devices which can actually convert human speech into text and vice versa. Futuristic devices such as videophones are being worked on, not just for deaf people but hearing people as well. The Rochester Institute of Technology in New York has already developed a local area video phone utilizing fiber-optics for smooth video transfer, which is paramount to be able to understand sign language over video.

        Low tech videophones can be made via the internet using videoconferencing software, but speed and video resolution problems remind users that they aren't quite in the STAR TREK universe just yet.

INTERNET AND THE AETHER

        The internet is another very important tool for deaf people. As more and more of the world's population communicates via email, instant messengers and other modes, the internet almost becomes the great equalizer. Deaf people may not be able to hear a voice, but they sure as hell can read and type, barring vision problems. I could have a conversation with a citizen of London without him ever knowing I wouldn't be able to hear him in person.

        Typing's almost natural to most deaf people. As previously mentioned, one of the major standbys for communication is a TTY. Telephone conversations are essentially typed conversations. It doesn't take much to make the leap from a TTY to a computer keyboard. E-mail, instant messengers, and ICQ programs all require the typing of messages from one person to another. Deaf culture has brought the language of the TTY to instant messengers. As in the end of a TTY conversation, when the talker wishes to leave, "SK" is used in instant messengers. Stop keying.

ScreenName1: Bye, gotta go. SK.

        A recurrent theme seen in the introduction of new technology is that at first, it is inaccessible to deaf people, then eventually, new functionalities are created, which deaf people can take advantage of. A prime example is the cell phone. At first, cell phones were squarely in the domain of hearing people. Today, an odd shift from the transmittal of voice to sending text (probably due to the popularity of the internet) has created a new mode of communication: text messaging.

        A common sight to see when a large number of deaf people get together is the retrieval of pagers from backpacks or pockets, tops being flipped open, and thumbs flying across the keypad. Phone calls can be relayed to text, and emails can be sent to pagers and vice versa. Conversations, while not instantaneous like a normal cell phone conversation, can be held on pagers.

PROBLEMS

        Not everything is all fine and dandy. I've hinted at some of the issues facing deaf people regarding technology. Hearing aids continue to carry a stigmata. They provide a visual demarcation between deaf people and hearing people. Typically, when older individuals start needing to use hearing aids, they refuse because they don't want to "be" deaf, which they believe hearing-aid use would mean.

        Cochlear implant surgery, while seemingly more routine today, still is major surgery. Parents, if they're aware and sensitive enough, are caught in a dilemma. The ideal age, according to the rehabilitative perspective, for a hearing impaired person to be implanted is when they're kids. This way, they would have hearing when they are in their formative years, developing language skills. Children as young as 4 years old can be subjected to this surgery. It's not a picnic, I'll tell ya. Even after surgery, I still have headaches and mild bone arthritis as a result of the surgery. I can tell when it's going to rain from the back of my skull. I doubt too many parents think about the consequences. They want a hearing child.

        Whoo- kind of a downer, wasn't that? Okay, here's a lighter and less serious problem. Directors' commentaries suck! One of the best features of DVDs is the ability to include supplemental material on the disc. Not every DVD makes these supplementary materials accessible to deaf people. I suppose they don't think deaf people care about what goes on behind the scenes. So far, only a small number of studios consistently CC their supplementary material, such as Paramount and Dreamworks. Unfortunately, audio commentaries continue to be ignored. It is possible to CC a commentary. Most likely, DVD producers feel it is cost-prohibitive and/or redundant. But I want to know what Steven Spielberg was thinking when he filmed JAWS! Directors' commentaries suck.

        Pager reception zones suck too. Just as cell phones have "zones," text pagers have them. One could pass through them unknowingly, and when she flips open her pager, she finds out her message from a hour ago still hasn't been sent. A conversation between friends can be interrupted and someone could be left hanging waiting for an answer for three hours. In fact, I composed a poem on this very subject.

        A number of other problems can be pointed out regarding technology for the deaf and used by the deaf. It all boils down to the old axiom, "Nothing's perfect."

        In spite of the problems and growing pains associated with new technology, the quality of my life and millions of other deaf and hard of hearing people's lives have been improved. One of the popular mottos in the Deaf community is: "I can do everything hearing people can do, except hear." I have technology to thank for providing me with the capability to live my life that way. It's certainly a long way from the Greek hillsides.

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