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Why not just give treecats keyboards?

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Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by BobfromSydney   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 2:22 am

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If they know how to sign the individual letters for particular words then they know how to spell them... If they know how to spell them then with true-hands and hand-feet it wouldn't be too hard to type right? (Or is it type-write? :lol: )

Now there would still be plenty of use for treecat-sign but keyboards coupled with a voice synthesiser (in 2,000 years they've surely developed something better than what Stephen Hawking uses) would be pretty useful for cats to be able to use. Another possibility is a portable device either using buttons like old SMS texting or a small touchscreen etc. Something lightweight that treecats can carry with them.

The flip side is that treecat sign only being understandable by a small segment of the population may be useful to obfuscate communication so outsiders can't understand what is being said.
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by dreamrider   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 6:54 am

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Given the current state of stuff like face recognition tech and motion capture, by 1922 PD, having a uni-link app that can read sign on-the-fly and vocalize should be child's play.

Why doesn't Elizabeth already have one?

Shouldn't the Tankersley family business that makes treecat skinsuits be all over this?

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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by thanatos   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:09 am

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Need to go further than that. Using modern technologies to fashion and design modern homes for Treecats. Normally, Treecat couple live in nests big enough to shelter them and might extend it whenever they have kids. But if say you have a colony of treecats living among humans, you might think towards fashioning homes that are ergonomically consistent with their anatomy (i.e. ceilings that are 1.2 m from the floor, rooms and appliances scaled to their size and number of digits, treecats sized beds, the houses themselves planned as tree of sorts etc.). The same goes for various tools that can be scaled down to Treecat size.
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by n7axw   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 9:21 am

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Oh the horror of it! Nimitz with an ipad! I think the cat just got out of the bag! :lol:

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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by Michael Everett   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 11:56 am

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I think that the 'cats still spell things as they sound. This works well for sign languages, but when it comes to the written form, there are still a few significant hurdles to overcome.

1) Identifying different letters. There are 52 basic letters (capital and lower case) plus numbers, punctuation and so on and so forth. That is quite a bit of memorization, although a Memory Singer could probably learn it and then transfer said knowledge across.

2) Tenses. Treecats live primarily in the present and generally do short-range planning. The past is fixed (thanks to memory singers) and the future doesn't exist yet. Learning to cope with the differing tenses and what they mean/imply could be tricky.

3) Spelling. Oh god. Spelling. English is one of the most insane language for spellings not quite matching pronounciations. Only Japanese is as complex, butthat's forvery different reasons.

Given time, though, it would work.
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by SWM   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:01 pm

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Treecats only learn to spell a few words for which there are no specific signs, such as certain proper nouns. Even many proper nouns have signs, because the treecats come up with their own names for persons and some places. So it is not accurate to say that they know how to spell.
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by Lord Skimper   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:27 pm

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A tree cat glove could translate sign into spoken or written text. Could be made very small very comfortable for haptic translations. Can be worn as a stand alone product or built into a skinsuit. Simple really. We can almost do this right now. It could be translated into whatever language you want. The deaf blind and mute talking to each other.
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by Yow   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 8:27 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:A tree cat glove could translate sign into spoken or written text. Could be made very small very comfortable for haptic translations. Can be worn as a stand alone product or built into a skinsuit. Simple really. We can almost do this right now. It could be translated into whatever language you want. The deaf blind and mute talking to each other.


I liked this train of thought...
and one of the "modern" developments for sign language.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/col ... lator.aspx

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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by MaxxQ   » Fri Jun 06, 2014 9:52 pm

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Why not just give treecats keyboards?


Might we see a treecat Rick Wakeman or Vangelis? :mrgreen:

Edit: Ooooo! With four "hands" capable of playing...!!
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Re: Why not just give treecats keyboards?
Post by John Prigent   » Sat Jun 07, 2014 5:17 am

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I thought Mange already had a keyboard.
Cheers
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MaxxQ wrote:
Why not just give treecats keyboards?


Might we see a treecat Rick Wakeman or Vangelis? :mrgreen:

Edit: Ooooo! With four "hands" capable of playing...!!
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