Blind Man Uses Echolocation, rides bike in traffic

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by madanthonywayne, May 22, 2011.

  1. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    This story sounds like bs, but apparently a blind man named Daniel Kish has mastered echolocation (the mechanism used by bats to see and by the superhero DareDevil). He makes clicking noises with his tongue and can "see" well enough this way to ride a bicycle.
    Daniel Kish lost his eyesight when he was 13 months old. For most of his youth, he functioned fine without a walking stick. He mountain bikes. He camps alone. He moves through cities handily. All thanks to advanced echolocation abilities.

    According to Michael Finkel (in an article for Men's Journal), Kish can sense everything around him by clicking with his mouth and listening to the quality of the sound, kind of like a dolphin. He calls it FlashSonar. Kish started clicking when he was two—many blind children do—but unlike others, he wasn't discouraged from doing so (organizations for the blind don't like him very much because they think it promotes a bad image of the visually handicapped). Ultimately, it developed into a tool. A very useful tool. He wrote a master's thesis on echolocation.
    You can read the rest here:
    http://gizmodo.com/5804194/this-man-who-sees-with-his-ears
    and he's apparently not the only one with this skill. I found an article about a school in England teaching this technique. Also, here's a video about a 14 year old named Ben Underwood with the same ability.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c49dS76KhGc
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3341739.ece
     
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  3. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Excellent method for overcoming such a difficulty! Hats off to the young man.

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  5. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Makes one wonder if there are any other instinctive ways of compensating which society, as either the old school of prudishness or the new one (PC), has been inhibiting in handicapped children: Kish started clicking when he was two—many blind children do—but unlike others, he wasn't discouraged from doing so (organizations for the blind don't like him very much because they think it promotes a bad image of the visually handicapped).

    Kish has also been teaching kids himself for a number of years: http://www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTERVIEW.shtml?id=Kish

    This topic also hints at the the underlying role of interpretative processes in perception, damaging traditional beliefs about "things" simply being given in vision, hearing, etc. (that they're not the product of either non-linguistic or linguistic inferences). Without the teaching or freedom to personally develop echolocation, the ordinary blind can't apprehend the degree of details from sound that these people do.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2011
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