Nebula

Closed captioning in an election year

A computer screen with the closed caption logo

In November I was exercising at the gym. At the front of the room, they’ve got four different networks on the TVs. When I’m on the bike machine, it’s hard to not watch the video. Being November, it was time for the renewal of Medicare insurance policies.

It was hard to not want to mock the Advantage plan advertisers which didn’t include captioning. The vendors are trying to reach an audience that has a higher likelihood of having hearing loss, yet their ads are inaccessible to that group of people.

Election year is another time for lots of targeted advertising. Again, the gym is a good opportunity to see how much different candidates or political parties value the community. If they omit preparing captions, they appear not to care about a wide swath of their hoped-for constituents.

Hearing loss isn’t the only situation where captioning is valuable. Just as I can benefit from the captioning at the gym, live captioning of sports events enhances the experience of the game at a bar or restaurant. At family gatherings such as Thanksgiving, the ones who want to watch a game can turn on the captions and mute the sound to allow the rest of us to visit.

Although my hearing is normal, it is nice to have the captions on while watching a movie. It helps when background sounds in the film muffle the speech. My mom has good hearing but prefers to have the captions on as well. Sometimes people talk too quickly. It helps us enjoy the latest Marvel series more.

YouTube and Nebula also have captioning in the videos. In addition, to the presence of captions, the videos, the urgency for captions on new material can come at the prices of accuracy. It’s not easy to create good quality captions. Captions can degrade when the transcriber or voice recognition system isn’t primed with the vocabulary of a technical video. The technology can continue to improve. Some shows acknowledge the service and who paid for the transcription as the first of the captions.

In the teaser trailer for the Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, I learned from the captions that the laughter at the very end is the Emperor. That was an interesting clue that felt like insider knowledge when I first saw the trailer.

I don’t really like to vote for a candidate whose ads don’t include captions. It shows a lack of care and consideration for who they are asking to vote for them. Do they really care about disabled or older voters, or do they just want to win the election as cheaply as possible?

Image “Closed captions” by Oregon State University [CC BY-SA 2.0]

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

The novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin has started me on a quest. I’ve reignited in my reading interest. More specifically, reading science fiction. I’m letting the Hugo and Nebula awards help me compose my reading list. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin won the 1970 Hugo and 1969 Nebula awards for best novel.

I obviously hate trees because I’m buying used copies of the books, rather than reading them on my kindle or other ebook format. I’ve found a convenient venue to locate used books at bookfinder.com.

The Left Hand of Darkness follows an envoy from Ekumen, Genly Ai. Ekumen is a federation of planets connected by near light-speed starships. However, relativity’s time dilation affects travel and trade. Ekumen has developed a long-term perspective because travelers will often return home decades after they left on a mission.

The people living on the aptly named planet Winter (also known as Gethen) are unique because of their fluid gender.  Every person can bear children as well as father them. However, most of the time the individuals are genderless. The effects of this on their culture is complex. On one hand, sexuality and nudity become much less sensitive a topic. Raising children is a more cooperative enterprise with more than the parents responsible. People are hospitable and welcome strangers. It’s challenging to know how to look at them from this more-or-less solid-gendered world. It’s easy for Ai to consider everyone a “he.” When he notices feminine qualities in individuals, he finds it disorienting.

The story describes three different nations. One, Karhide, is hierarchical and like a large confusing family. It is hierarchical and formal. The second, Orgoreyn, is bureaucratic. Its citizens deal with interminable paperwork and passport documents when they travel. However, the bureaucratic culture has work for everyone. The more feudal Karhidish society has strong bonds of mutual aid and generosity. The third culture, the Handarata, is mystical and has a subtle mythology. It is not explored as deeply as the others but seems very Zen-like with contradiction and paradox essential attitudes.

The language of the novel is very clear and descriptive. During a journey over a large glacier, the feelings of fatigue and the difficulty dealing with the murderous cold was striking. At one point, the novel made me actually jump with surprise and emotion. The book’s early chapters do not provide a linear story. Alternating chapters include information from Gethenian mythology and storytelling. This is helps the novel be a little more anthropological so that I had get a better feel for the world.

The Left Hand of Darkness reveals that my native assumptions about gender are not the only way to see things. The Hainish people share strong bonds. There are intrigues and power struggles that Ai has to navigate through. The title is misleading because the book isn’t about a struggle between darkness and light. Instead, it is a testament to endurance and the ability of people to form bonds of trust and honor.