I’ve been reading a lot of Windows 8 reviews over the past two weeks. One thing that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned at all that has changed in the new OS is the audio cues – sound alerts of things happening in the system have all changed, and as someone who is fairly auditory in terms of preference for receiving information, it’s taking me a bit of time to get used to the new orchestration.
The fact it hasn’t seemed to be picked up by reviewers is more evidence that we are, as a species, predominantly visual generally in the way in which we like to receive information, something I wrote about a while back here. Listening to the latest RadioLab podcast this morning, there is a fascinating story about two blind men, both of whom lost their sight (rather than being born without it), and the different strategies that they have adopted in life to cope with their loss: one becoming even more visual in his thinking, the other consciously throwing away visual memories to focus on the senses he has available to him now.
mmitII 