AXSmap volunteers upload reviews about Wheelchair accessibility

Today I took part in AXS Map's first Vancouver community mapping day, doing Yelp-style reviews about the degree of wheelchair accessibility being offered by some stores and restaurants. We were helping to test an application being developed by Jason Da Silva, an independent film maker and activist (and fellow Emily Carr alumnus). The above 1 1/2 minute video describes the project.

Jason lives and works in New York City. He started this mapping project as a positive, useful response to the frustration of trying to live an ordinary life using a scooter in a place with few public services that are truly wheel-chair accessible. He visualized a tool that would save him time by telling him whether or not he could get in a door before he found himself blocked by a couple of stairs. Working with Google Maps he invites people to contribute Yelp-style reviews that filter the range of available establishments for accessibility. Stars are assigned regarding washrooms and ease of access from the street, and reviewers can also choose to comment further.

I had a good time, seeing my familiar territory with a new perspective, in the company of Ray, another volunteer reviewer, and Tom, who was capturing us on video.

It didn't take us long to drop in and upload reviews on almost a dozen establishments on Granville Island. I was glad that I could recommend the GI Gelato and Coffee shop, for more than their Sugar-free Raspberry!

This is just the beginning of the mapping process in Vancouver, as well as other cities in North America. If you would like to sign up to become a reviewer, follow this link to the AXS Map website

Jason is also here at VIFF, the Vancouver International Film Festival, to screen his award winning film "When I Walk", about his life with MS. Here is the 2 1/2 minute trailer.

Art in the Face of Dementia

My dad, Fred, is the star and cameraman of this video, "Tipperary", made in 2009. Dad died the following year, but he showed up tonight at the Emily Carr Alumni Reunion, along with the dad of my conversational companion. We were talking about how we were using skills we learned at art school to find a creative response to the daily, relentless good-byes associated with losing a parent to Dementia.

Even though he was already deeply affected by dementia, I invited my dad to my 2008 Emily Carr graduation ceremony. By doing so in his own life, he had been my inspiration to take the plunge and quit my job so that I could finally go to art school while there was still time left in my life to enjoy the benefits. Dad and I got lots of family support so that we could share my big moment. My sister and her husband shepherded Dad off his plane and stayed by him the whole weekend. It was only later that they told me that most of the time Dad wasn't aware that he was in Vancouver. I was given the best seats in the house -- the box right over the stage -- but nobody got more than two tickets. So my son, David, did double duty as my photographer as well as taking care of dad. Sadly, there are very few unblurred photos of walk across the stage, since my dad kept elbowing David and exclaiming (loudly) "There she is! There she is!"

Reunions are a time to reflect, and this is my five-year mark. I feel privileged to have been able to live the dream that I was cooking up while working on this blog as my grad project. I visualized myself as a Community Artist, using the digital media technical skills I'd acquired to support elders in creating projects that were meaningful to them. I've not only been doing this, but also do my own work as part of a collective, Quirk-e (Queer Imaging and Riting Kollective of Elders). I now am writing and performing, as well as continuing with video and photography. When I stand up there and emote, I imagine Fred elbowing some angel and saying "That's my daughter!"

Douglas Rushkoff, author of "Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for A Digital Age"

A podcast from CBC radio's technology programme "Spark" caught my attention today. Douglas Rushkoff full radio interview on CBC "Spark" (24:27 min).

In his interview with Nora Young, Douglas Rushkoff talks about the need for awareness that we are within a constructed environment when we are occupying a space like Facebook or Google. He is concerned that people are unaware that they are not the customers -- they are the content. The "customers" are those that are paying for it, namely, the advertisers.

He also talks about the educational role that is needed from the last generation of people who have lived in a pre-digital environment. He advises that children learn to do enough programming that they understand on a gut-level that it is all about algorithims. He suggests that a good time to start would be at the grade four level, just after children have been shown long division for the first time. This is their first algorithm, where they learn that if they apply rules to a problem, they can methodically step through to an answer. He says this is a profound experience for children, when they see that they don't have to understand the whole thing in order to still work their way to answer. He says this is a teachable moment to then take another couple of weeks to show them a bit of programming, so that they understand that this grinding through steps is what a computer does too.

He also made an analogy to cars. You don't need to know how to build a car. But if you own one, you should learn how to drive it. Otherwise, you are just a passenger. You are trusting that person you are paying to drive you around is really looking after your best interests when he tells you there really are no grocery stores in this town, and that he has no other choice than to drive you twenty miles to his brother-in-law's restaurant.

It will take a bit of time investment to listen to the Spark interview, but worth it. What else have you got to do on that twenty-mile drive?

If you prefer to read rather than listen, here is the review in Wired.com. It described "Program Or Be Programmed" as "One of the most important and instructive books of our time."

The GeekDad Interview with Douglas Rushkoff

Interested in going straight to the source? Here is David Rushkoff's website

Photo of Rushkoff by Paul May. Licenced through Creative Commons.

Phone your mom -- or your child

Sometimes the "smartest" part of a smart phone is the remnant from that earlier big black object that used to hang on the wall.


Today is Mother's Day, and I just got off the phone after my adult son called from Toronto, three time-zones away. I'm used to initiating most of our communication by texting and email, but I melt with gratitude every time I have a conversation with him.  I bet most parents feel the same way, regardless of the age of their children. 


Earlier today, a friend mentioned hearing Molly Johnson, on CBC Radio2 "Weekend Morning", urging her listeners to "Phone your mom. Don't email her or text her." For most parents of any age, a voiced conversation resonates on many more levels than a text-based one, or even a Hallmark card. But research proves that there is a two-way benefit. In an January 5, 2012 article "PowRer of Mom's Voice Silenced by Instant Messages" on the Wired Science section of the Wired.com website, Brandon Kelm has data that proves that "When girls stressed by a test talked with their moms, stress hormones dropped and comfort hormones rose. When they used IM, nothing happened." And he concludes, "People still need to interact the way we evolved to interact".


My son is much better at using the "phone" part of his Blackberry instead of the texting options. He sometimes calls me as he is walking or riding the bus. I confess that it is rare that I use my iPhone to call him. Often when he calls, I've forgotten to turn my ringer on. It's my loss in foregone serendipity. Cost is not a factor. My cell-phone account has the option of listing 5 long-distance number for unlimited free calling, and his number is top of the list.  I need to get past the fixed idea I have that a phone call is an event that needs to occur in a fixed context. I simply need to get in that habit of using my own transition time to call him. I will try to avoid boring a bus-load of people. But a few minutes of conversation would certainly transform bus-stops into sites of warmth and pleasure.

Welcome back Nancy!

I dread seeing the "Welcome back" greeting when I log into Facebook or some other social networking site. Right off the bat I feel like an insufficiently ashamed prodigal. I don't want Facebook to think I have been dragged back by their "Notifications  pending" emails. Those are as inspiring as the  letter writing sessions at Summer Camp. But I'm noticing that my Facebook denial is getting in the way. As I was planning the movies I'd see at the DOXA film festival, I kept thinking of re-connecting with a friend from my grad project group at Emily Carr.  At my request, as students, she'd been my Facebook mentor. Last time we tried to make a plan, she told me she doesn't do phone calls or emails anymore. So this time I didn't even try to contact her. Fortunately last night we ran into each other at one of the events and I confessed my avoidance. We agreed to get together through the mutual comfort zone of texting. Now, in my perverse "late adopter" way, I want to re-visit my Facebook resistance. Can I afford NOT to be there? Is there a balanced way to participate? Anyone want to create a Facebook Support Group with me?

Sent from my iPhone4

Personal project@ the Apple Store

"Proust & the Squid": Reading and the Internet

Dr. Maryanne Wolf is concerned about the generation who has begun its reading life looking at text delivered to them, often from the Internet, via a computer screen rather than the printed page. As the Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in Boston, she is doing high-tech research looking at the brain itself, to evaluate whether anecdotal reports about reduced attention spans and impatience with complexity are because our brains themselves are changing. Brains remain plastic throughout our lives. Are they physically adapting to a skimming style of reading? And if so, does this shift reduce our capacity to do what she calls "deep reading"?

She has written a book on this subject, called "Proust & the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain" (published in Canada by Harper Collins). Her work is also discussed in the Atlantic Monthly's "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" which I discussed in my June 18 posting here: "An Article Worth Reading (All the Way Through)".

Her ideas seem to be getting mainstream attention. Last week, I heard an interview with her on CBC Radio One's popular "Sunday Edition". In the twenty minute conversation with Kevin Sylvester, she described how when she started writing "Proust and the Squid" her intention was to describe the "miraculous" deep reading process. When it comes to reading, she said, "the point of it all is to take what you read and then think and infer and gain insight. It is really beyond what a lot of people think about as 'just' reading. It's deep thinking .. and it takes place in one hundred to two hundred milliseconds. Over the eight years that she was writing the book "I had a completely different world on my hands". The effect of doing research using the vast amount of data streaming in from the Internet was resulting in a "skimming" reading style. "I was really beginning to worry that we were losing what we have. That it was trickling through our fingers ... not the older reader, but all that the younger reader was not necessarily going to do if their formation for reading was in the more superficial mode that is too often the case with the 'screen' kind of reading... By the end of the book I was filled with questions about what we don't know, and what we really need to be vigilant and do some very good and very sophisticated research on. What does that child who has really learned how to read as a 'screen reader'. What is the difference between that reader, and you, Kevin, who comes to the screen with a well-formed, critical, inferential reading kind of a mind?

"So I'm questioning whether the formation is going to lead us to have children who don't have the same kind of intrinsic 'pause button' that you and I have when we read and we know we have to go under the surface; don't assume anything; want to fill in the blanks; want to go back and check. There's a real critical -- and I use a term by a poet -- 'quality of attention' that we bring to reading because that's how we were formed. What I want to do is ... do research .. and see whether or not the strength of comprehension processes is altered... Reading is not natural in the sense that there is a genetic code that says it has to go this way. The Chinese reader is different from an English reader... [who]... is just a little bit different from a French reader ... So we certainly know we can form a different circuit. So my question and my concern ... is that we may be, without intention, giving rise to children who are more superficial and less analytical than you and I."

Her opinions have brought resistance. In her conversation she makes it clear that she, as a neural scientist who uses sophisticated technological tools to study the brain, is not a Luddite. Nor is she alone. She points to where the National Endowment for the Arts, using a different research basis is "coming to similar concerns" in their publication "To Read or Not To Read".

How to start addressing her concerns? She asks for "quality research" on this topic. And "close scrutiny" to "phasing-in technology... so before we know our answer, we won't have lost our kids. It's too important not to raise these concerns, even though I don't have the evidence. Because we have a lot of kids out there who are being shaped every single day of the year in ways that I think we've lost control over."

A reader recalls asking "What is a computer?"

"My father worked at the National Research Council and he used to tell me about the computers that he worked with and how large they were. At the time, they took up whole rooms and the computer cards that we used at church to make Christmas wreaths, always looked so strange with all those holes poked in them.

In the late 70's, I worked in a medical laboratory in Ottawa. At the time everything was written by hand or we used typewriters. The medical requisitions were all handcoded for billing but then we had a team that came in to implement the transition from paper to computer.

I remember being told that the computer would tell you by a beep if you made an incorrect entry. That "thing" beeped all the time. I refused to learn how to use it, I couldn't handle the rejection of a computer beeping. From that day forward, I decided to never get a job where I had to use a computer. Forget that. No way.

Kids do change your life. Looking back, I should have known that I was being set up by my parents when they brought over a computer for the kids. You know the kind, that took the big floppy disks and the CPU was a big thing that sat on the desk. Games, if you have a phobia working with computers, learn how to play children's games. That way you get used to a cursor and how to navigate the mouse. But these games were in DOS, before the mouse and Word.
Still, we spent many a night as a family with young kids, trying to figure out who could go to the highest level during Crystal Caves, my how I miss that game.

Well, eventually, I had to learn how to use wordperfect, as I was too daunted to try Microsoft Word, and eventually I had to learn how to use Word. Even though sometimes the computers still beep at me, I am now considered as the "computer wiz" where I work and I love computers."