Transcripts of Warren Francis

One of the things that I'm very interested in is how people react when I explain what I hear, or how I experience the world. Because I don't know what they hear. And so the only connection I really have is to explain to them what I experience and see how they react and how that's different from their experience. One of the things I did was I took some classical music and used audio editing software to remove the frequencies that I couldn't hear. And then played it for my friends. And just kind of watched their reactions to see what they thought. And it was interesting, I get a lot from that. But in that line, as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for this "Research on research" program over the summer. I was talking with a professor in linguistics and a professor in computer science, and one of the things for speech recognition that's very difficult . And if you could find a way to do it, it would be very helpful, is to predict what kind of errors are going to happen. And me as a human speech recognition system, I have at least some way of recognizing or predicting what errors I'm going to make, and I cope because of that. I can adjust for that. So the idea was to begin exploring the prediction of speech recognition errors by creating a system that would be able to simulate the speech recognition errors made by somebody with a hearing loss like mine. I would be able to make a computational model, that would just predict what kind of speech recognition problems someone would have based on a certain hearing loss. Which would be helpful in audiology when they choose what words to read and in what order. When they're saying "Say the word Cat, say the word Ball" Hours of my childhood spent repeating lists of words. But when they choose what words to read next, what if the computer could adapt, and based on what the computer heard the child say, it could pick another word that would most accurately distinguish between different types of hearing loss or things like that. There's lots of possibilities for it. And I was excited by that possibility. It's still just words on paper right now. 

But if I get into that program, then that will be what I spend my summer working on. What do you want to do with your degree once you're graduated, do you know? That's the million-dollar question. I, right now, I'm planning to stay at Ohio State, and get a Master's degree in Computer Science. I am still trying to figure out what to, what area of computer science to narrow down into. I love artificial intelligence, I took a couple of courses in that, but even that's not narrow enough to get a Master's degree in. But there's, I don't know, everything, every field is too broad to know everything, so I have to just pick something and decide to be satisfied. But I love to learn and it's really been a hard decision for me to pick something that, and just decide "Ok, this is what I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing." That's actually a little stressful for me. Because I have a history, my whole life the things that I love have been knowledge and exploring and learning new things and I just have to convince myself that by narrowing myself I can still explore and find breadth in any topic. You can. I mean I take a course every year One course every year just because I want to. And there's no need to, you don't have to, to narrow yourself, you're good just like you are. Did I forget anything? Well I don't know if you forgot but I'm curious, you kind of laced it in, but I guess I want a direct story or connection more, if you could give one about how, about writing in particular. How, what you do with writing, do you write? How do you use technologies to write? You've talked a fair amount about literacy and also about how computer and some other literacy technologies help you think and solve through, and how you solve problems. But I'm interested in the writing. I, when, for most of my academic career I have not enjoyed writing, it feels like it's too slow. It feels like it just doesn't capture... By the time I have the sentence down I have thought of four better ways to say it, and so I go back and I change it, and it's just been a laborious process to try to get my thoughts down on paper. 

But I, when I actually sit down and I actually accomplish the huge effort of getting something down on paper, it really functions, like you said, as a way for me to think. It functions as... After I'm done, I might not care anything about what I just wrote, the actual paper, the thing I put together, except the time commitment that it represents. The process of getting it down on paper has forced me to make my words, at least temporarily... I have to temporarily commit to some statement, and then look at that, and then think about "Ok, is that really true?" It just gives me a way to organize my thoughts. With new technologies coming out, with wikis, with things that will just let you say "Ok here's something I want to expand I can come back to it later." And then just continue just typing out your thoughts. And then go back later and click on something and type more. I think that sort of technology really has the potential to keep pace with, at least better pace with how I think. Not be quite so much work, to make it all linear and one thing following then next. 

That's an important statement actually for compositionists. Because they don't think about those technologies and those ways. I think also about literacy, because you've mentioned that you've taken some ASL, American Sign Language classes. So can you talk a little bit about your connection with visual literacy and with literacy in that language or another language or how you... Do you use ASL with other people now, or did you learn it pretty easily or was it a struggle for you? 

Yeah actually that's a part of my childhood I just totally didn't mention. My mom, when she found out that I was losing my hearing, decided to take interpreters courses, and started to learn American Sign Language. And also because of her knowing my dad's mom, that was one of the things that first interested her in my dad was his... What is your mom's name? Angelique, Francis. There was a Carol Francis in town who was an interpreter. Interesting coincidence. Because she was learning ASL, she taught it to me as a child, not in any sort of comprehensive or well organized way, but just, she would use it every once in a while. So I was exposed to it, and then when my grandmother would come to visit, I would see her use a mix of ASL and signed English, but mostly ASL. My dad knew how to finger spell very well, but didn't know much American Sign Language. So it was just kind of an odd mix of things. And of course there was nobody in my Elementary School to use ASL with, so I never used it as my own language. Till I was dating the deaf woman, and then I started to use it as a spontaneous language and have conversations in it, and I love ASL. It's beautiful, it's I love it. Linguistically it's fascinating, so now that's added another dimension to it. But... For ASL, I think it's a tragedy that there's no written form. I think it's. Yeah, it's one of the most frustrating things I can think of, to have a language with such a rich visual form, a real time, two people can communicate in this form, but there's no easy way to permanently store it and organize it. It's just too cumbersome even. All the systems that they've tried to come up with are just too cumbersome. Not natural in the slightest. And so it, I don't know. I really feel for those who use ASL as their first language, because it's beautiful, it's wonderful, but it makes it very difficult for them to learn. From recorded things. Literacy, that's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in the linguistics of American Sign Language. Because if there was a way to record and put American Sign Language into symbols on paper, then there's lots of linguistic technologies that you could use to process that. You just lose so much when you try to do that with the nuances of facial expression and everything. I can't, I don't want to close either without leaving the cochlear implant untouched. And I guess that's in part because of, I mean it is a computer technology as well. That is also about, in many ways, aiding people's literacy. 

So what are your thoughts about implants, or what do you know in that dimension? 

That's obviously a controversial issue. I, for literacy, I am undecided on this, I don't know. I personally would probably not choose a cochlear implant. Unless for whatever reason there was no other way. As someone who grew up in the hearing world, as a hearing impaired person, I think getting a cochlear implant permanently makes someone an outsider from both the hearing world and the deaf world. And so they have no world. They have no community, no culture. Seeing, spending time with the deaf, the culturally deaf, I envy what they have. I envy that they see themselves as completely whole and complete people. Whereas I have spent my whole life as a disabled person. And I envy that. But on the other hand, on the side of literacy, I see what a struggle it is for the deaf. In certain areas. In most areas the deaf can do perfectly fine, they communicate, they interact with the world, and they get things done. But I think in terms of literacy, in terms of educational level, it's just not matching up in that area. I can see why people would want to, to take their child from the deaf world and put them in the hearing world. I don't think the cochlear implant accomplishes that completely, but I can understand why people would take that direction. 

I have a question. You're in the student technology consultant program here at OSU. And it seems to offer both opportunities and challenges. Could you just talk about maybe your motivation for being interested in it, and what you found really, challenging or interesting about it? 

I love to watch the light bulb go on for people. I love to help people understand things, and I, I'm comfortable with and I understand, and I enjoy technology. It, so, for me it was just the dream job, it was too good to be true. "They're going to pay me to do this?" And it's, I think it's a really good idea, I think the literacy is not only going to involve English and being able to communicate, But... It used to be communication could be writing a letter and putting the stamp on it and putting it in the mailbox. And all you needed to do that was paper and a pen and a stamp. But now communication is a lot bigger than that. It's a lot harder than that. There's a lot more of a learning curve to communicate on a level with everybody else around you. And I think that literacy has to be expanded to include more than just being able to piece of paper. Or else, no one will ever find your words, and you won't be able to find other people's words. Unless you can have some way to, to an end to that channel of all the knowledge that's going all over the place now. Warren you've been absolutely marvelous. I would take a class with you any day. Absolutely, you've been marvelous. Thank you very much, you're our first interviewee, and I couldn't think of a better one to involve, so thanks. When are you graduating? I was planning to graduate this quarter. But since I've added the computer science major, it will be next spring. Cool. Next spring I teach the 597, the deaf world class, again. I'll keep that in mind, thanks. It's great. Are we done? Thank you!