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Do you know what this thing is?

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Some of you do.

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And many, many more of you have definitely seen one of these before,

4
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but you might not have realized what it is.

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And that's because it's not meant to be seen.

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It's meant to be heard.

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This device is really fascinating to me

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because it represents a kind of innovation

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which had to happen without being noticed.

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Because if you noticed it,

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that would defeat its purpose.

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Here, let me just hook 12V up to this thing.

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[the sound of a bell being rung repeatedly]

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That’s right, this is an electronic railroad crossing bell.

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If you've spent any time near a railroad crossing in the US,

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you'll have heard them.

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They provide an audible warning designed to get your attention

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so you know a train is approaching

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and maybe you should get away from the railroad tracks.

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That's a very important warning.

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And because we used to use literal bells

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which were rung by an electromechanical striker for that purpose,

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the electronic replacement for them needed to make the same sound

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so it was immediately recognizable.

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And so... they do!

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These things started to show up in the early 1990s.

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This particular railroad crossing...

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“bell” was made by General Signals Incorporated,

29
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and they still produced them to this day

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with basically the same construction as this one.

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Which delights me because holy crap does this thing scream hand-built in some garage somewhere!

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This is literally a PVC drain pipe and cap spray painted silver

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and with these pill-shaped holes cut out of it with bug screening installed.

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Hanging below the cap is a circuit board

35
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which contains an amplifier, ROM chip, and DAC.

36
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When you give it 12V,

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it just plays the recording on that ROM chip over and over again

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through an off the shelf horn-style loudspeaker,

39
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which fires down onto this wedge thing

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which will bounce the sound out in all directions.

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And then there's this fitting on here -

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the only thing made of actual metal! -

43
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which allows this to be installed atop the mast of a crossing signal.

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This is critical safety infrastructure.

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And it's like made out of parts from a hardware store.

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I love it!

47
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Now, there are several different manufacturers

48
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making these things, and they don't all look just like this one.

49
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But the concept is the same.

50
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Just a loudspeaker of some sort on top of a pole,

51
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which imitates the sound of the big bells of the past.

52
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GSI is really proud of their 16-bit sound technology.

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Such high fidelity!

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Some mechanical bells are still in service, and in fact,

55
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some are even still being manufactured.

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So you'll still see them (and hear them) from time to time.

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But electronic bells like this are far more common these days,

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because they're just a lot more flexible

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and presumably require less maintenance.

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They don't really have anything to service and just might one day fail.

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And that's what happened with this one.

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The loudspeaker had failed,

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and whatever railroad owned it simply tossed it.

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But almost anything can be fixed if you're patient enough.

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And that's how I got it working.

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The board was fine, if a little corroded,

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and the hardest part was simply getting it apart

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because the fasteners holding the board and speaker to the, I remind you

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PVC drain pipe cap had all rusted quite badly.

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I still can't believe how crude this thing is.

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For those curious, here's the raw signal coming from the board.

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[the bell sounding crisper but a bit scratchy, too]

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This early version has a highly compressed recording,

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which doesn't capture the clang of the bell really at all.

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And instead it comes across more like a thump.

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Though, through that tinny loudspeaker, you can't even really hear the thump.

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It's more like a tone that decays and then resets back to full intensity

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again and again.

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And this is how I tested that the board was working

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when I first got the thing.

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[an oddly hi-fi bell]

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I have a weird job.

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But I'm not just making a video about this railroad crossing bell.

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I'm making a video about what it represents:

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conveying information through sound.

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This is something we humans do all the time.

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In fact, I'm doing it right now!

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I'm using my gross wet mouth parts to modulate the tone

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coming from my gross wet vocal cords, and with a little consonant flair,

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I can convey information from my brain to yours.

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But that's using language.

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Certainly one of the most impressive things our brains can decode,

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but also kind of clunky and slow.

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Our pattern matching circuits can work in many other ways, too -

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so long as we're consistent.

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Hence, this thing.

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I want to focus some attention on the different ways

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we use sound for communication purposes.

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We have a tremendous wireless communication system

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built into our bodies that we can use in so many ways.

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Yet I feel like this is getting neglected lately.

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Some of that is due to shifting cultural preferences.

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I know these days many people find noises to be annoying and obtrusive,

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but they don't have to be.

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And if we put a little more effort into good sound design,

106
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we might get a little closer to that sci fi future we were promised

107
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and not the one we're being sold.

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But let's start with something a little more old school.

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[ding]

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If this rings a bell, you should know

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It actually strikes a chime.

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This is a door entry alert,

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and it's the simplest kind there is.

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It's just a plastic box with a chime and spring loaded striker attached to a magnet.

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When installed on a door, a metal plate on the door

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will pull on that striker as the door opens,

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storing a little bit of energy in that spring.

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And once the magnet is released, the striker hits

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the chime bar, producing a pleasant tone.

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The purpose of this is to alert shopkeepers

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who might be in the back of their store that someone has entered.

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There are, of course, electronic versions of this,

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but frankly, none of them produce a sound quite as pleasant as these old ones do,

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which is probably why they're still so common.

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This slider, by the way,

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allows you to turn this off if you'd like.

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I've always been fond of these things

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because they do their job incredibly well while also being dead simple.

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The sound they produce is distinct but pleasant,

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and it carries well without being startling.

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It checks all the boxes!

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Yes, there are fancier things out there

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which can activate sound makers

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in various locations, which might be helpful depending on the situation.

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Such as for a larger store.

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And of course, now we can install smart door sensors

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which can even send a push notification to your phone.

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But if you've got a small store and all you want

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is to be alerted to someone walking in,

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these are hard to beat.

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They just work.

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No need to mess with batteries even.

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This is the same sort of thing as the railroad crossing bell:

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a specific sound, which means a certain thing.

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But we can also use a wide variety of sounds to 
convey the same message with the use of encoding.

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For example, do you know what this means?

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[an electronic tone playing in time with the icon on-screen]

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You probably should by now.

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This pattern of sound is used to alert of a fire emergency.

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Full disclosure this is not an international standard.

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I think perhaps there's merit to it becoming one, but for now,

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this is mainly a US thing as far as I can tell.

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But that thing is called Temporal 3,

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and it has become the standard signal that fire alarms and smoke detectors use.

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The sound those things make is meant to be annoying and intrusive to get your attention.

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But you'll notice I haven't been using the sound of a smoke alarm.

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That's because this signal is based entirely on cadence.

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Three bursts of sound are followed by a silent period.

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Usually this pattern operates at one beat per second.

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So you have three seconds of sound, then one second of silence.

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And that has several key advantages:

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the fact that it's a pulsing sound makes it easier to notice.

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A constant noise can blend into a noisy environment,

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but something which alternates between sound and silence

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is much more likely to pierce through the background.

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But simply getting noticed isn't the only goal.

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It's easy to notice that something's beeping,

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But it's also easy to dismiss that.

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Beeping could mean anything from a reversing truck

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in the distance to your neighbor using their microwave.

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Temporal 3's pause between every three beeps

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serves as a literal pattern interrupt.

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That can be somewhat jarring, so it's good for getting your attention.

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The need for a specific kind of signal to indicate

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a fire emergency has been known for many years.

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I stumbled across this old promotional record from the Autocall company

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demonstrating The Slow Whoop:

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a signal they had devised and were trying to make into something of a thing.

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No doubt since patents royalties would be quite lucrative.

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The record went through the same list of things

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I just did on what makes for an effective signal.

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And the slow whoop did check all those boxes.

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But creating a device that made that audible signal back in 1974

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required some fairly complicated and expensive electronics for the time.

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So while the slow whoop did end up in use in some places,

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it wasn't commonplace, except perhaps in certain locales.

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Temporal 3, on the other hand, could be adapted to almost any existing fire alarm system.

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All that needed to be tweaked

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was how power was sent from the fire alarm panel

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out to the horns throughout the building.

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Rather than send constant power during an alarm,

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tt would be pulsed following the Temporal 3 cadence.

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And with that simple change,

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you've made the alarm far more distinct and noticeable,

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while also giving it a specific meaning.

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But the somewhat odd thing is that despite this being an option for over 50 years,

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and even being encouraged by various fire safety organizations,

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it still isn't quite universal in commercial fire alarm systems.

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And that's made even weirder by the fact that when it comes

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to household smoke alarms, Temporal 3 has become effectively universal.

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Smoke alarms of my youth sounded very different compared to how they sound today.

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I don't know when exactly that change happened,

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but it's been something like 20 years.

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And here's the thing:

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standardization had to happen because in addition to smoke alarms,

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we also use carbon monoxide alarms in the home.

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That's a very different kind of but no less dangerous emergency.

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And in many cases, those two functions are combined into a single alarm device.

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That necessitates a different kind of signal

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for the two different things it's designed to alert you to.

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And a carbon monoxide alarm in the US

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produces four rapid beeps with a long pause in between them.

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Like this:

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That is quite distinct from the other alarm pattern,

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and makes the two alerts easy to distinguish.

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I think this sort of signal standardization,

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which codifies what different sounds mean, is an unquestionably good thing.

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That's why the crossing bell still sounds like an old school bell.

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And in many places now, it's required by fire codes.

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The National Fire Protection Association

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specifies Temporal 3 for fire evacuations

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and Temporal 4 for carbon monoxide.

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But what I think is so strange is that apparently

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this is just something you're supposed to pick up on.

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I don't think I've ever encountered anyone explaining the difference between those two alerts,

226
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or even the simple fact that groups of three long beeps with a second of silence between them

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is now the near universal signal for a fire emergency.

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And I think that's just kind of strange.

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So I'm doing it.

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You're welcome!

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Of course,

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we've been using patterns of sound to mean certain things for centuries.

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Clock towers ring bells in certain sequences

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so anyone in earshot can tell the time.

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And even something as simple as a doorbell

236
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can be configured to make a ding dong when someone's at the front door

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and just a ding (or dong) when someone's at the back door.

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Now we just text “here” so that doesn't matter so much these days.

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But there was that period of time

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where you had to learn Morse code to send text messages.

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So, you know, there's another example of using patterns of sound

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to convey a specific meaning, one letter at a time.

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But here's a much more modern use of sound patterns,

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which is still in use today and which demonstrates a mastery of sound design.

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[airplane bing-bong]

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Yeah, those bings, bongs, and bing-bongs you hear on an airplane

247
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are another form of audible alert with some surprising flexibility.

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Those are used by the crew to communicate specific needs to one another.

249
00:12:54,573 --> 00:12:57,543
For instance, if the captain needs to speak to the flight attendants.

250
00:12:58,377 --> 00:13:00,846
The specifics vary from airline to airline,

251
00:13:01,180 --> 00:13:03,549
but pay attention and you'll pick up on a lot.

252
00:13:04,884 --> 00:13:07,219
That's actually just good life advice in general -

253
00:13:07,653 --> 00:13:08,921
it's why I'm like this!

254
00:13:09,321 --> 00:13:11,624
But the thing about those bing-bongs

255
00:13:11,624 --> 00:13:15,594
is that they were designed to be noticeable, to convey complex meaning.

256
00:13:15,728 --> 00:13:18,731
and - unlike what we've been discussing so far

257
00:13:19,198 --> 00:13:20,699
to be unobtrusive.

258
00:13:21,534 --> 00:13:23,869
I've certainly been on airplanes where the volume was set

259
00:13:24,270 --> 00:13:26,772
a little too high so they can be obtrusive,

260
00:13:27,039 --> 00:13:29,742
but when done well, it's the best of both worlds.

261
00:13:30,242 --> 00:13:34,180
It's a signal designed to be noticed by the people who need to notice it,

262
00:13:34,613 --> 00:13:37,416
but to be subtle enough to not distract you from the movie

263
00:13:37,416 --> 00:13:39,118
you're watching or the book you're reading

264
00:13:39,118 --> 00:13:40,419
or the sleep you're trying to get.

265
00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:44,223
And through the use of two tones with two different pitches,

266
00:13:44,557 --> 00:13:46,425
there are several distinct patterns

267
00:13:46,425 --> 00:13:50,429
which can be used to convey different things like who is paging who.

268
00:13:51,297 --> 00:13:54,533
It's a system that's been in use for a very, very long time,

269
00:13:54,533 --> 00:13:56,769
but which does its job in such a subtle way

270
00:13:57,002 --> 00:13:59,805
that many fliers don't even realize what it's for.

271
00:14:00,673 --> 00:14:03,175
Airplane bing-bong, in my opnion,

272
00:14:03,175 --> 00:14:08,080
demonstrate the amazing things we could be doing with careful and intentional sound design

273
00:14:08,614 --> 00:14:10,149
if we only wanted to.

274
00:14:11,050 --> 00:14:13,686
Maybe I'm just weird, which I am.

275
00:14:13,986 --> 00:14:17,323
But it feels like we just sorta lost the ability

276
00:14:17,323 --> 00:14:19,792
or perhaps desire to do this.

277
00:14:20,526 --> 00:14:22,895
When I was a kid, people wore wristwatches

278
00:14:22,895 --> 00:14:24,430
which double beeped on the hour.

279
00:14:24,496 --> 00:14:27,666
Something I personally found quite handy for keeping track of the time.

280
00:14:28,534 --> 00:14:32,872
But today, devices which make noise almost feel taboo.

281
00:14:33,539 --> 00:14:35,574
I seem to be one of very few people left

282
00:14:35,608 --> 00:14:39,311
who bother to curate a selection of notification sounds for my phone

283
00:14:39,645 --> 00:14:43,282
and set them on a per-app and even per-contact basis.

284
00:14:44,016 --> 00:14:46,552
This is something I find incredibly helpful,

285
00:14:46,819 --> 00:14:48,621
but which clearly went out of fashion.

286
00:14:50,222 --> 00:14:53,759
And no, this video is not just to address my social anxiety about that.

287
00:14:53,792 --> 00:14:55,094
What are you talk- that's ridiculous.

288
00:14:55,294 --> 00:14:58,597
I understand that we are probably in a corrective period

289
00:14:58,597 --> 00:15:02,167
after the years of incredibly irritating ringtones,

290
00:15:02,468 --> 00:15:05,337
and these days, a lot of you have way too many apps

291
00:15:05,337 --> 00:15:07,673
sending you way too many push notifications,

292
00:15:08,340 --> 00:15:10,609
which is more of a condemnation of push notifications

293
00:15:10,609 --> 00:15:13,212
and not the apps you use, for the record.

294
00:15:13,445 --> 00:15:14,179
But personally,

295
00:15:14,179 --> 00:15:18,284
I choose to work to keep things on my phone at a reasonable to manage level,

296
00:15:18,550 --> 00:15:22,288
and there are plenty of non-intrusive sounds out there.

297
00:15:22,788 --> 00:15:25,057
I've been using my own custom sounds for years,

298
00:15:25,057 --> 00:15:27,092
some of which are airplane bing-bongs.

299
00:15:28,160 --> 00:15:30,696
I just like to know what that notification was

300
00:15:30,696 --> 00:15:32,665
and whether it needs my immediate attention

301
00:15:32,698 --> 00:15:35,067
no matter where I might have set my phone down,

302
00:15:35,067 --> 00:15:37,403
or before I even take my phone out of my pocket.

303
00:15:38,170 --> 00:15:42,908
And look, I am not about to buy another computer to wear on my wrist.

304
00:15:43,309 --> 00:15:46,011
I simply refuse to be that plugged in any longer.

305
00:15:46,645 --> 00:15:49,949
Though if someone would resurrect the Pebble, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

306
00:15:51,450 --> 00:15:52,851
Oh wait, that happened!

307
00:15:54,053 --> 00:15:56,989
Yeah, I started writing this script a long time ago.

308
00:15:57,589 --> 00:15:59,591
If you don't know anything about the Pebble smartwatch,

309
00:15:59,591 --> 00:16:02,861
I'm not about to go on a tangent about it, but if you're like me

310
00:16:02,861 --> 00:16:06,398
and simply want a notification-mirroring watch with a whimsical design

311
00:16:06,398 --> 00:16:10,069
philosophy and battery life measured in weeks and not days,

312
00:16:10,602 --> 00:16:14,006
well, you should know it is coming back and it's even open source.

313
00:16:14,640 --> 00:16:16,842
I'll put a link in the description for those who want more info.

314
00:16:17,176 --> 00:16:19,345
But anyway, even though I have

315
00:16:19,345 --> 00:16:22,348
what might be my favorite ever gadget back on my wrist,

316
00:16:22,715 --> 00:16:25,417
I still want my phone to make a sound

317
00:16:25,584 --> 00:16:30,155
because I have a really hard time noticing vibration and always have.

318
00:16:30,622 --> 00:16:32,591
I even miss it on my wrist sometimes.

319
00:16:32,825 --> 00:16:37,796
So for me, I consider audible notification sounds to be an accessibility tool.

320
00:16:38,630 --> 00:16:41,600
But I am also considerate about other people

321
00:16:41,700 --> 00:16:46,205
and use sounds which aren't obnoxious, like those airplane bing bongs

322
00:16:46,472 --> 00:16:48,540
or the people mover chime.

323
00:16:48,540 --> 00:16:49,575
Or this one.

324
00:16:49,575 --> 00:16:50,743
[Metra/Caltrain door closing chime]

325
00:16:50,743 --> 00:16:53,012
That's for those of you who still think I'm car-brained.

326
00:16:53,712 --> 00:16:56,982
I would argue that there's actually quite a lot of fun to be had here.

327
00:16:57,516 --> 00:17:02,254
And while I am sympathetic to the notion that 
sound pollution is a thing, we need to be concerned with,

328
00:17:02,654 --> 00:17:06,992
the choice between silence and sound pollution is a false choice.

329
00:17:07,659 --> 00:17:12,131
There's a lot of those happening these days, probably because we're so stuck in binary thinking.

330
00:17:12,531 --> 00:17:15,200
But as airplanes show us, we can design

331
00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:18,404
sounds which aren't obtrusive, but which are helpful.

332
00:17:19,271 --> 00:17:21,573
And when you get yourself out of binary thinking,

333
00:17:21,874 --> 00:17:25,411
you can do things like make your most obnoxious apps be silent

334
00:17:25,544 --> 00:17:28,080
while your important ones make themselves known,

335
00:17:28,380 --> 00:17:31,717
and in ways which are meaningful to you and pleasant to everyone else.

336
00:17:32,518 --> 00:17:34,920
And to be clear, I don't think it should be up to you.

337
00:17:35,554 --> 00:17:37,656
I spend way too much time on this!

338
00:17:38,524 --> 00:17:41,693
I just think we need to appreciate and bring back

339
00:17:41,693 --> 00:17:44,663
the art of good and intentional sound design.

340
00:17:45,531 --> 00:17:49,768
Many years ago, I made a video on elevator chimes and how in the US,

341
00:17:49,902 --> 00:17:52,838
the Americans with Disabilities Act requires an elevator

342
00:17:52,838 --> 00:17:57,009
which is going up to make a single chime when it arrives at the landing,

343
00:17:57,376 --> 00:18:00,712
and an elevator which is going down has to make two chimes.

344
00:18:02,781 --> 00:18:06,385
Very few people even pick up on that unless they're who that's meant for:

345
00:18:06,652 --> 00:18:07,853
the blind.

346
00:18:08,253 --> 00:18:10,889
But it's incredibly useful for those who need it.

347
00:18:11,123 --> 00:18:15,160
And when we design things well, we can make them useful for all.

348
00:18:16,161 --> 00:18:21,600
I'd love it if our tech overlords could be bothered to hire some good sound designers again

349
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:25,270
who understand the tension between sound pollution and accessibility.

350
00:18:25,604 --> 00:18:30,109
Because the default choices that come with a phone these days all kind of suck.

351
00:18:30,109 --> 00:18:32,578
And for those of us who want to be intentional about it,

352
00:18:32,911 --> 00:18:35,481
it's a very clunky experience to set up.

353
00:18:35,814 --> 00:18:37,816
Even using the sounds the phone came with.

354
00:18:38,584 --> 00:18:41,019
And I know that people designing phones today

355
00:18:41,019 --> 00:18:43,522
don't give a rat's ass about people like me anymore

356
00:18:43,522 --> 00:18:46,592
because they've made what I consider to be basic functions,

357
00:18:46,592 --> 00:18:48,727
like putting a phone on vibrate or silent,

358
00:18:48,894 --> 00:18:51,063
or adjusting ring and notification volume

359
00:18:51,396 --> 00:18:53,799
to be way more difficult than it used to be.

360
00:18:54,466 --> 00:18:56,702
It's irritating enough for someone like me,

361
00:18:56,735 --> 00:18:59,705
and genuinely a problem for people like my parents.

362
00:19:00,405 --> 00:19:02,875
When an Android update changed how that worked,

363
00:19:03,075 --> 00:19:07,012
my mom kept accidentally setting the notification volume way, way down

364
00:19:07,346 --> 00:19:09,281
and she was missing stuff right and left.

365
00:19:10,115 --> 00:19:12,184
That's not really an issue with sound design,

366
00:19:12,184 --> 00:19:15,254
but it is an issue with basic usability and accessibility.

367
00:19:15,721 --> 00:19:19,525
And I would love it if the people in Silicon Valley could respect those of us

368
00:19:19,525 --> 00:19:22,094
who don't want our crap to change on us like that.

369
00:19:22,327 --> 00:19:24,296
That is not a software upgrade.

370
00:19:24,329 --> 00:19:25,964
That's user hostile.

371
00:19:26,398 --> 00:19:28,300
Think about other people for once!

372
00:19:28,934 --> 00:19:29,968
While I'm ranting,

373
00:19:29,968 --> 00:19:35,140
let me also just say I wish I could make my phone do things like suppress the notification sound

374
00:19:35,140 --> 00:19:39,511
when someone is texting me a lot and simply make the noise once every minute at most.

375
00:19:40,245 --> 00:19:41,747
The beautiful thing is there's a setting

376
00:19:41,747 --> 00:19:44,750
which claims to do that called notification cooldown,

377
00:19:44,917 --> 00:19:47,786
but it clearly doesn't work because it's been on the whole time.

378
00:19:47,953 --> 00:19:49,154
Classic Google.

379
00:19:49,421 --> 00:19:52,291
I also kind of miss what my very first cell phone did,

380
00:19:52,291 --> 00:19:56,461
which was keep beeping every few minutes to let me know I had an unread text.

381
00:19:57,229 --> 00:20:00,832
Obviously I wouldn't want it to do that for every text message I receive,

382
00:20:00,999 --> 00:20:03,869
but maybe for starred contacts?

383
00:20:03,869 --> 00:20:06,672
And like, this is a computer!

384
00:20:06,672 --> 00:20:08,807
That would not be really hard to implement at all.

385
00:20:08,807 --> 00:20:13,478
But nobody in charge of notification settings 
(in Android world at least) can imagine it being useful.

386
00:20:13,478 --> 00:20:14,813
So it just doesn't happen.

387
00:20:15,647 --> 00:20:18,850
And I know there's probably some app I could use to make that happen,

388
00:20:18,850 --> 00:20:20,852
or some other phone out there which can do that,

389
00:20:20,852 --> 00:20:24,423
but I truly don't think it's that weird of a thing for someone to want,

390
00:20:24,723 --> 00:20:28,360
and it should just be built into the OS like it claims to be.

391
00:20:30,162 --> 00:20:33,765
I'd like that way more than I want my phone to help me write an email!

392
00:20:34,199 --> 00:20:35,734
Okay, calm down, calm down.

393
00:20:36,301 --> 00:20:37,803
They don't need to know about that one

394
00:20:37,803 --> 00:20:40,806
Gmail account of yours,
which for some reason has literally never managed

395
00:20:40,806 --> 00:20:42,574
to send a push notification to your phone.

396
00:20:42,708 --> 00:20:44,676
Despite tinkering with the Gmail app settings

397
00:20:44,676 --> 00:20:47,746
and the Google account settings and the phone notification settings

398
00:20:47,913 --> 00:20:50,682
several times off and on throughout the literal years,

399
00:20:50,882 --> 00:20:52,484
they don't need to know that it's not important.

400
00:20:52,584 --> 00:20:54,119
Everyone knows everything sucks now.

401
00:20:54,586 --> 00:20:56,521
But it sure could suck a lot less.

402
00:20:57,456 --> 00:21:01,093
Anyway, earlier I mentioned the notion of false choices.

403
00:21:01,893 --> 00:21:05,130
This is something I keep noticing more and more in the world of tech,

404
00:21:05,130 --> 00:21:10,269
and we really need to start becoming aware of 
when people are pushing them on us and rejecting them.

405
00:21:11,069 --> 00:21:14,840
A designer's idea of “best” may be great,

406
00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:17,809
and it could be appropriate for a large majority of users,

407
00:21:18,744 --> 00:21:21,780
but one man's presets are another man's hell.

408
00:21:22,047 --> 00:21:25,317
And if we don't give people the option to do something differently,

409
00:21:25,884 --> 00:21:29,488
it's important to interrogate why that might be.

410
00:21:29,488 --> 00:21:32,758
Right now, despite having amazing computers in our pockets,

411
00:21:32,758 --> 00:21:34,359
which can do tremendous things for us,

412
00:21:34,860 --> 00:21:37,996
we have a false choice between audible notifications

413
00:21:37,996 --> 00:21:40,732
that are irritating and possibly don't even work correctly,

414
00:21:40,999 --> 00:21:43,168
and a phone which never makes noises at all.

415
00:21:43,869 --> 00:21:46,905
And I believe we keep getting caught up in these false choices

416
00:21:47,105 --> 00:21:49,341
because we no longer do a very good job of

417
00:21:49,341 --> 00:21:52,678
considering what might be important to other people, and the scenarios

418
00:21:52,678 --> 00:21:56,014
those other people might encounter in their day to day lives.

419
00:21:56,815 --> 00:21:58,016
Because you know what?

420
00:21:58,283 --> 00:22:01,053
I would like to have an audio cue to tell me

421
00:22:01,053 --> 00:22:03,155
I got an email and from which account.

422
00:22:03,755 --> 00:22:06,191
Many times I'm waiting to hear back from someone

423
00:22:06,191 --> 00:22:08,560
and I don't want to miss being notified, which,

424
00:22:08,860 --> 00:22:11,430
as I explained earlier, often happens to me

425
00:22:11,430 --> 00:22:14,766
since I don't notice haptic vibration quite frequently.

426
00:22:15,801 --> 00:22:16,535
And yet,

427
00:22:16,535 --> 00:22:19,838
I would also like to be able to preview it on my wrist

428
00:22:19,938 --> 00:22:22,541
so I know whether that was the thing I was looking out for

429
00:22:22,541 --> 00:22:24,710
without digging my phone out of my pocket.

430
00:22:25,777 --> 00:22:28,714
I want my technology to make my life easier,

431
00:22:28,714 --> 00:22:31,783
and that means I want my technology to do things

432
00:22:31,783 --> 00:22:34,553
that work for my weird brain and its weird brain things.

433
00:22:35,153 --> 00:22:39,124
And yet, I would also like to be considerate of the people around me.

434
00:22:39,424 --> 00:22:43,261
So I would like to have audio cues which are unobtrusive.

435
00:22:43,895 --> 00:22:45,564
I make the effort to do that,

436
00:22:45,564 --> 00:22:48,400
but it's way too much effort to be putting on the end user.

437
00:22:49,334 --> 00:22:52,037
We can have the best of all worlds,

438
00:22:52,337 --> 00:22:56,541
but it requires intentionality, respect for other users and their needs,

439
00:22:56,908 --> 00:22:58,844
and respect for other people.

440
00:22:59,745 --> 00:23:04,683
Only then will we truly be Living with Each Other.

441
00:23:08,487 --> 00:23:12,657
...something which alternates between sound and silence is more likely to pierce
through the background,

442
00:23:13,825 --> 00:23:16,027
recording - there’s weird delivery happening.

443
00:23:16,161 --> 00:23:18,029
followed by one second of zilence.

444
00:23:18,697 --> 00:23:19,898
Zilence?

445
00:23:21,266 --> 00:23:24,302
such as the piezoelectric sounders in a battery operated -

446
00:23:24,302 --> 00:23:25,303
There was a weird click there.

447
00:23:25,303 --> 00:23:26,705
I guess I'm starting over again!

448
00:23:27,139 --> 00:23:31,009
And in many places now, it's required by fire cords - cords?

449
00:23:32,944 --> 00:23:36,815
The National Fire Protection Association specifies tempourorral 3...

450
00:23:37,616 --> 00:23:39,484
I'm really struggling with words.

451
00:23:39,684 --> 00:23:40,886
Airplane -

452
00:23:40,886 --> 00:23:41,987
Airplane bing -

453
00:23:43,422 --> 00:23:44,456
Airplane bing-bongs

454
00:23:44,923 --> 00:23:46,625
Airplane bing-bongs

455
00:23:46,925 --> 00:23:48,126
Airplane bing-bongs,

456
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,228
in my opinion [starts breaking]

457
00:23:50,228 --> 00:23:51,730
I'm saying it too many times!

458
00:23:52,431 --> 00:23:53,632
It's breaking down.

459
00:23:54,929 --> 00:23:58,429
[bing-bong]
Well folks, erhhhhhhhh, looks like we've passed 10,000 feet.

460
00:23:58,429 --> 00:24:03,082
That sure is a lot of feet. Maybe there's a marathon going on or something?

461
00:24:03,082 --> 00:24:06,460
Ok that's not my best work.

462
00:24:06,460 --> 00:24:08,828
But y'know, some effort is better than no effort.

463
00:24:08,828 --> 00:24:10,649
Except in November, of course.