Slashdot Mirror
Cindy Smart Knows Better Than To Say Naughty Words
D'Sphitz writes "Cindy Smart, the first doll in the world to be able to read, tell the time and do sums.
Cindy Smart 'sees' via a camera located under a bee on her overalls and has a computer 'brain' that can recognise more than 600 words and objects, although she refuses to recite certain 4-letter words. 'We don't say those kind of words,' she shrills, refusing to even spell obscenities. 'That's a bad word.'" Sounds like a good candidate for a personality transplant.
The Sim Pal doll in The 6th Day was named Cindy. I wonder if this is more than just a coincidence...
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
That may just mean that she can give spelling and definitions for 600 words.
You can give most speech synthesizers a random string of letters and they will sound it out.
-laughs-
Probably won't carry the same weight as when you trick a human being to do it; its voice synthesis probably isn't on par with AT&T Natural Voices.. it'll probably be kind of choppy, halting, broken English.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
Seriously, though, through most of history toys have been teaching tools, not mere playthings - girls had dolls to learn how to take care of children, etc. So a high-tech toy is more appropriate for today's children than an "old fashioned doll"
I'd be giving it about an 80% chance of saying 'no! that's a bad word!' when presented with "sex". Yay. Pass the silly cultural hangups on to the next generation, and confuse 'em good and proper as well.
Disclaimer: I don't have kids of my own (yet), but I'm the proud uncle of two.
There are a few things I've learned the last few years (and looking back on my own childhood, they become very clear):
- The simple, non-complex toys are played with more often than the high-tech gadgetry. My oldest niece plays a hundred times as much with her ragdolls and with her Barbie (*shudder*), than she do with the 'true to life' babydoll she got two years back. The fancy toys holds the kids interest for a short while, but they are very likely to return to the toys that allow them to play in freeform.
- Boys and girls do play difrently. From what I've seen, girls will go for the 'readymade toys' like dolls and pretend-stoves, while boys will seek out toys that allow they to create and modify, like Lego or Mechano (or even better; a hammer, some bits of wood and a handfull of nails).
- Kids today have, as a general rule and in the parts of the western world I've seen, more toys than they had when I grew up - and I'm not that old. My guess is that a lot of parents would rather buy toys for their kids than to play with their kids - and the rest are giving into peer-preasure.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
You have an interesting point, but I doubt that every day English users are thinking about the linguistic roots of words when making such value judgements.
I think that the value people place on words is influenced only very indirectly by past usage. People think "intelligent" sounds more sophisticated than "smart" because "smart" is used more commonly. It's a bit circular, I know, but I think it's true.
Remember the first time you heard the word "epiphany"? Since its meaning is so specific, you probably thought it was a sophisticated word. Once you found out that everyone and their mother was using it, it probably lost its lustre. The word "perogative" lost all its dignity when Will Smith explained it to the masses. I guess I just think that language snobbery is a facet of generalized snobbery: things that are common are looked down upon, while esoteric things are elevated. I think there's also a point to be made about polysyllabic words sounding more sophisticated than monosyllabic ones, but I don't think I need to prove it.
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As for your story about your experience in that class, I agree with you completely. However, your professor has a point--linguistic connotations can creep in subconsciously, and really affect the way a particular question or statement is framed. While "native South Africans" sounds innocuous, "the natives" might be a bit problematic. For example, "native New Yorkers" would sound fine, but referring to the citizens of New York as "the natives" would only be done as a joke. What your professor probably should have done instead would be to point out some of the negative connotations of that word in order to make people aware of them. Censorship, though, is almost always counterproductive.
Simple. It just happened. The Old English word was just the one used by, let's say, less sophisticated people, much more often. The other one, though, was 'imported' by probably more sophisticated people, and is obviously used fewer times, and has a different connotation. 'Shit' simply happens to mean something different than 'feces', it is a more vulgar word.
Still, I think overly limiting the vocabulary ('gosh darn') is mostly hypocritical and serves no real purpose... kids, for example, say 'god damn' anyway, and on average, it doesn't make them much better or worse...
But the trick is that you have to learn where to use what kind of language, more generally -- say, when at a job interview or when at a party with your friends, and as such limiting the use of certain 'bad words' is a matter of proper education.
I find it fascinating that Slashdot A.) Found the story interesting enough to post, and B.) Automatically reached for reasons to deride it. I find it interesting that the idea of a doll that can't say "shit" or "fuck" offends the Slashdot ethos. Lurking behind this story being posted at all, and most of the comments on the subject thus far, seems to be the idea that parents trying to shield their children from obscenity isn't merely futile, but is, in fact, actively evil.
Why is that?
I get the impression that the vast majority of Slashdot readers don't have children. (Insert the obvious "don't have girlfriend" jokes on your own.) One doesn't have to be John Ashcroft or Oral Roberts to believe that maybe six-year-olds don't need to learn the word "cocksucker."
I am far from a prude. I've used lots of those four-letter words in my own fiction, when needed, and laughed my ass off at "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker" from South Park: The Movie. And I myself don't have kids. But oddly enough, despite that, I can still imagine why parents might want a doll that can't say obscenities. I find it rather interesting that, thus far, not a single Slashdot poster seems willing to consider the fact that such a doll might indeed have a useful purpose...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
All right, since when are we all so sick that the first things people think about when we talk about a kid's toy are the ways we can subvert it to our lecherous and or insane desires.
I remember, back when I was a kid, the best thing we had in talking things was the Jurrasic Park playset, all it would say for five days was, "Jurrasic Park Compound Secured" and then a light would flash. God damned, I barely even got new toys, I just got a bunch of modeling clay and pretended that they were new toys. Parents, I urge you, modeling clay is cheap (but a little messy) and it lets your children express their creativity. Don't just buy them a toy because it can do your parenting for you (and don't use television or computers for the same thing) because that's how the evil robots will take over the planet.
On a more serious note, I think that interactive toys are a nice touch, but I always thought that the point of getting toys was to make up your own adventures and envision how everything played out with a physical aid and your imagination. And yes, when I was younger (okay, like seven years ago) I did play with sticks and dirt, it's good stuff.
Apparently political correctness is higher in their priorities than good education. "Those" is plural, but "kind" is singular. For $149, I expect proper grammar.
It's not a bias against roots. The connotation of words is what people most respond to. Classic English example is "shack," "cabin," and "cottage" all mean "small dwelling," but which of these would you rather live in? I wouldn't want to live in a shack, because the word's connotation is negative. English speakers don't just use the denotative meaning of words; they keep the connotation well in mind.
Another example is, do you call a particular person "African American," "black," or the N word? They all have vastly different implied meanings, but they all refer to the same race. (Even I refuse to say the latter because I don't have sufficient karma to burn. :))
I'm not sure what exactly distinguishes the connotations of shit and feces, except that the latter is far less likely to provoke people because it's relatively unused and very neutral.
www.firastudios.com
You are right that those Middle English speakers who lost to the William the Conqueror were quite a bit less sophisticated than the Norman nobility who came to rule them. The fact that there were quite unsophisticated people in Normandy at the time didn't have much effect on the English language.
I guess I really have three points (they are also made by Orwell as linked-to by my grand-parent post):
1. There are quite a few maligned words out there (many 'four-letter' words and other four-letter words; many Germanic-rooted words) that are quite wonderful and expressive if they aren't over-used.
2. Big words (often from French or Latin) are okay, but many people use them to obscure things and sound important.
3. The most important factor in word choice should be accuracy, ease of expression for the writer/speaker, and ease of comprehension for the reader/listener.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Just what are we protecting our children from? When do they lose the benefit of that protection? Is shielding them from things that they're are GOING to be exposed to for the rest of their lives really protecting them at all?
In short, yes.
You have the air of a teenager who does not spend much time with children. The fact is that a six year old is not equipped to understand sex. With sufficient "education" they could probably pass a sex-ed exam, but that's "book learning"; they still don't understand it. Among other things, they are literally not physically equipped to understand what "sex drive" or "horny" really means.
You have forgotten this because you are now old enough to understand, but in your lack of empathy you forget that everyone is not like you, especially children.
The problem is that what a child does not truly understand will be filled in with something, and the odds of them filling it in correctly are effectively zero. Surely you've seen one of those humor postings that contains 20 or 30 "explanations" from children about how the world works, all very funny, all very wrong. Now imagine that with sex, where they don't have the first clue what it is.
While one does not necessarily need to go to extremes to shield a child (because mercifully they are rather uncurious about stuff they have no inkling even exists; most 5 or 6 year olds should be happy with the explanations that babies require a mommy and a daddy, and probe for only limited details beyond that), it is still better to shield them from stuff that they can not and will not understand, until they have a framework for handling it.
For a more neutral example, look at the number of Slashdot-type people who believe mystical things about Electromagnetism or Quantum Physics or other subjects they totally don't understand. Their ignorance is filled in with garbage.
Furthermore, unlike misunderstanding QM or EM, which is relatively harmless, a misunderstanding of sex has empirically verifiable negative effects on people, ranging from merely awkward moments that should't have been awkward to seriously maladjustments (often caused by early sexual abuse; remember I'm using this as an extreme) requiring years of therapy to address, if it can be addressed at all.
Shielding a child from these things is an attempt to prevent the child from experiencing these negative effects. Any parent who doesn't shield their kid to a large degree is doing their child a serious, potentially life-changing (negatively) misservice.
I'm a big believer that we seriously underestimate our children routinely and are harming them thereby. But this is an exception. Try to teach a third-grader calculus, and they won't get it (with rare exceptions; see Piaget's theories for reasoning on that), but the misunderstandings they will develop won't harm them significantly. That's not true for sex; it has real effects on relationships and understanding their place in the world.
For a humorous demonstration of this, there's a South Park episode where the kids learn about sex; I recommend it to you. It's not as far out as it might seem; the only reason that sort of thing doesn't happen in real life (except for the final silly Mad-Max-style assault bit) is that kids feed back to their parents what they learned, and some of the parents would have noticed sooner the misconceptions they were developing and taken steps to defuse them. Otherwise, the damage done to the children's relationships (and in the real world, it could be worse; it certainly wouldn't be artifically erased at the end of the episode when the Reset Button is pushed) would be real.
How long until the All American doll comes around that teaches children "freedom is a naughty word" or "we don't talk about disobedience"?
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