Charles K. Bliss
Author of Semantography (Blissymbolics)
About the Author
Works by Charles K. Bliss
Tagged
Common Knowledge
There is no Common Knowledge data for this author yet. You can help.
Members
Reviews
Statistics
- Works
- 6
- Members
- 12
- Popularity
- #813,248
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 1
‘Are you a Catholic?’
‘Err, no….’
‘Would you do your work for a Catholic?’
‘I do my work for anyone who needs it.’
‘What is the cost?’
‘I do not charge’
‘The pope needs a board for communicating. It needs to be in Latin, Polish and Italian.’
Kathyrn’s fame is world-wide if you are in the know. When the last pope was dying, he needed one of her boards to communicate. It is a combination of algebraic notation and Bliss symbols. She gave this example to me that she’d recently put together. It was for an English-speaking surgeon working in an operating theatre in Indonesia. Along the top is the local alphabet and along the side the local numbers for 1-10. This much the surgeon learns. In each square, referenced algebraic style is his word for something and then the Bliss symbol. Underneath is the local word for it. The Bliss symbol is most necessary in the case of users who have little or no literacy. The surgeon can also point, if necessary.
I’ve been finding out a little about speech recognition and translation between languages computer-style lately. It was eye-opening to see this technologically primitive method. According to Kathryn what she does is in demand because it is most reliable, both in terms of understanding between languages without hiccups and in terms of being technology free. It isn’t going to break down. It isn’t going to run out of power. In the field – and she gave the example of disaster situations – it is looked to because it works. I’m guessing also that these her boards can be developed very quickly for specific situations. I don’t know when software will be able to do that. Maybe it will transpire that however brilliantly software assisted speech recognition ends up developing, nonetheless at the level of disaster/emergency something like Kathryn’s system of Bliss symbols will always be used. Ie maybe the two methods will complement each other.
Bliss would be thrilled that his work was being recognised and utilised in such a way. When it was finally picked up in the early 1970s in Canada it was for the use of children to communicate who otherwise had difficulties. A laudable application, but Bliss had in mind something grandiose. He wanted a language of symbols to break down linguisitic barriers throughout the world and with that the negative cultural aspects of language. Growing up prior to WWII, being imprisoned in camps for a while, he associated language with evil intent in a way sociologists would deny these days, but which drove his ideas.
Another thing drove him. When he was young his father took him to a lecture given by a group of North Pole explorers. He was utterly taken by their fearless dedication to do this irrespective of danger to themselves. It gave him the desire to want to do great things, to give to the world. Like so many European migrants who came to Australia with wonderful gifts (he was a chemical engineer) to give in the post WWII period, he found he had to take on a manual factory line job. But perhaps it gave him the intellectual freedom to dedicate himself to the huge task he’d set himself to help mankind. Reading this reminded me of some of the scientists Smolen looks at in The Trouble with Physics, the ones who do the important big work are often not the ones in academia, who tend to spend a remarkably small amount of time doing research – ie thinking – but the ones who support themselves, again in menial labour, that frees their brains to do the important thinking that leads to major scientific breakthroughs.
An amazing man, I’m wondering now about visiting the NLA to look at his papers. I expect some fascinating tales are buried therein.
… (more)