Thinking in Braille

About a year ago, I began participating in the Ethnographia Project in Second Life. The project, called "Virtual Worlds, Disability, and New Cultures of the Embodied Self," is supported by a research grant from the National Science Foundation. Keao Wright, another project participant, asked me to help her build something she very much wanted: a pink crystal ballroom. She wanted it to be two stories, with the top open to the sky. She wanted the lower floor to be a dance floor, and the upper floor a terrace with seating areas for people to gather and chat. She wanted a water fountain with chimes in the center, a glass entryway, and pink crystal for the walls and floor.

There was something remarkable to me about this: Keao has been blind from birth. What sort of "picture" for this ballroom did she have in her mind, if she has been blind her whole life? She was conveying her idea to me, but what was the idea itself like, in her mind? For me, it would have been a mental picture. But for her, I wondered, what? I asked her, and she said, "I just have an idea of it." She couldn't describe the form it took. She just knew.

We all carry representations (mental maps) of the spaces around us inside our heads. They're what make it possible to find our way, whether it be through our homes, or our communities at large. We all have mental maps, whether we're sighted or blind. But what do these "look" like, for someone who's blind?

People who are blind do have spatial representations in their minds. They just don't happen to "encode" the information with their eyes. They encode it by sound and by feel. Blind people read Braille using their spatial encoding abilities when they're reading a line or page of text by feel.

The picture with this post (below) says YOU ARE HERE in Braille. (It's a view of the raised dots as seen at an angle, from the lower right.) It's not a mental picture that a blind person sees in their mind when they read in Braille, but they still have a mental construct of what they feel. They have a spatial representation of those dot patterns inside their mind. Without it, Braille makes no sense.

If you are able to touch-type, without looking at the keyboard, you're using a similar, non-visual spatial construct. Without any visual guide, your mind knows spatially where the correct keys are. You type by feel. It's as simple as that.

It turns out that the "visual cortex" region of the brain is a misnomer. It's more the "spatial cortex". It's as active in a person who's blind as one who's sighted. Just because a blind person does not see a mental map in their mind doesn't mean they don't use one. Spatial is not always visual, and a mental map is not always a picture. Imagine that!

The Mind Has To Poop Once In a While

"The mind has to poop a little once in a while too, you know." ~M. Blauvelt

Have you ever noticed when someone asks, "What do you think?" or "What do you believe?" sometimes you don't truly know your answer until you try to say it? You might have thought you knew, but as you express it, you might discover a few surprises. Articulating a thing is actually a necessary step in the process of knowing it. The mind really does have to poop every once in a while.

We have thoughts, ideas, and opinions on all kinds of things. Sometimes we're content with them staying inside our heads, but realize this: They're often thoughts only half thunk. They have to be articulated to be fully processed. So whether you express them digitally, or on paper, or in chats with family or friends, don't hold them all inside. Use anything from journals, sketchbooks, and notepads, to forums, meetups, and blogs. Articulacy ‒ the ability to express yourself ‒ is as important as being literate. We all need good mental regularity! What goes into our heads is important, but also, what comes out.

Add Vulnerability and Stir

The theme of the day is courage. I'm not talking about the kind of courage it takes to do great things. We all know about that kind of courage ("he fought a big battle," "she overcame the odds"). Those make epic stories. I'm talking about a different kind of courage though: the courage to be yourself.

The courage to be yourself is a backstage kind, but it's in no way less great. It's a still, small voice that says, "I have something to say." You have to make room for it. You have to hush all the other voices that jump in to drown it out. And then, an even tougher job. You have to dare to be vulnerable. Vulnerability feels very scary, but, look at it this way: Contrary to what it might feel like, vulnerability isn't "the state of being open to injury," it's the state of being exactly who you are.

See Dirt, Clean Dirt

I once knew a person who had a remarkably clean house, and at the time, I was going through a depression and had been struggling with the condition of mine. Her husband was a house builder, and they had a fairly large house. They had two small kids, and she had a busy life. I asked her, what was her approach? Did she do the housework on a schedule? Did she hire someone to clean? She told me no, she used a "see dirt, clean dirt" approach. I've adopted that approach ever since.

Let's translate this to work styles in general. Some people do well with long to-do lists and are very productive when they have everything planned out on a schedule. I am not one of those people, however. I have much more of what I've now come to call an "ad hoc" work style. I used to get frozen in place by daunting mountains of work tasks ahead of me. Nowadays, I combine "see task, do task" together with another thing I once also learned from a friend, which is "most things take five minutes," and I'm amazed at how much can get done.

Thoughts Were Made To Be Thunk

"Learn is not a transitive verb." ~Peter Gould

When I used to teach university courses, something that I found myself often needing to say to students was: "Show me that it passed through your brain." Contrary to what most of them presumed, I wasn't interested in having information parroted back to me. Teaching is not information delivery, and learning is not delivering it back. Thoughts were made to be thunk.

Why Do People Believe Strange Things?

I often ask myself, why do people believe strange things? The more I think about it, the more I realize this: People don't believe things because they're true, they believe them because they're useful.

So then, this raises another question: Useful for what? That's what we need to try to understand and address.

"They're ignorant" becomes a more compassionate question: What need are they trying to meet? And then, maybe: How can that need be met in a better way?

"I am wondering, why are you here?"

"I am wondering, why are you here? Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm?" ~Yoda


Welcome to Maganda Mind! It is an ad hoc collection of semi-original thoughts, little bits of the view from where I sit, in the digitalreal. What's the digitalreal? It's the gossamer gradient between virtual and real. In a color gradient, like from yellow to orange, where does one color become the next? There is no line. That gradient is my world. If you're reading this, the digitalreal is your world, too.


Most people have ideas about things. For me, ideas are things. They are things to be seen, found, and made. They are big things, they are little things. They are serious things, play things and serious play things. Some come in handy, some lie around. Sometimes they're shiny, sometimes they're not. Sometimes I'm borrowing them, other times making some of my own. Sometimes they're in my head, other times in my hands. But, whatever and wherever they are, you'll always find me tink, tink, tinkering. Let me know what you tink, tink, think!