{"id":2078,"date":"2010-12-20T10:05:42","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T10:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2078"},"modified":"2010-12-20T10:05:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T10:05:42","slug":"its_like_were_living_in_the_fu_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/20\/its_like_were_living_in_the_fu_1\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Like We’re Living in the Future!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the original Star Trek<\/i>, Captain Kirk seduced the alien babes with the help of his trusty Universal Translator. The Colonial warriors of the Battlestar Galactica<\/i> (1978 vintage, of course) carried a gadget called the Languatron while on patrol, just in case they ran into non-English-speaking creatures. And in an inspired bit of silliness, Douglas Adams came up with the miraculous — and unexpectedly deicidal — Babel fish<\/a> for the heroes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Well, the new iPhone app Word Lens won’t exactly turn your phone into a Languatron or a Babel fish — it works with text only, not spoken language — but it’s pretty damn incredible nonetheless. Check it out:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

This is not<\/i> a hoax. It’s available at the iTunes app store<\/a> and I’ve found reviews for it in a number of places. And even though the reviews appear to be mixed — the app’s literal approach leads to a good percentage of Engrish<\/a>-style misunderstandings, apparently — the thing does<\/i> work, if not quite optimally. One reviewer<\/a> says, “Word Lens will work well enough if you need to read a street sign or specials in a restaurant.” And I can attest from my own experiences as a monoglot wandering alone through Germany that understanding street signs and menus is often all you need to get by.<\/p>\n

As my Loyal Readers have probably figured out by now, I’m not a real cutting-edge guy, and I resist hopping on most bandwagons just on principle… but this app is almost<\/i> enough to make me want an iPhone. Almost. Maybe when my five-year-old Nokia flip-job finally gives up the ghost and I have a practical incentive for buying a new phone…<\/p>\n

(Via Andrew Sullivan<\/a>, a political blogger who is often at his most interesting when he’s not writing about politics…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk seduced the alien babes with the help of his trusty Universal Translator. The Colonial warriors of the Battlestar Galactica (1978 vintage, of course) carried a gadget called the Languatron while on patrol, just in case they ran into non-English-speaking creatures. And in an inspired bit of silliness, Douglas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}