Certainly a novel interface. It calls to mind the Nintendogs bubble-blowing function. The “twist” (sorry!) here of getting into the mindset of a blender is funny.

Blendie is an interactive, sensitive, intelligent, voice controlled blender with a mind of its own. Materials are a 1950’s Osterizer blender altered with custom made hardware and software for sound analysis and motor control.

People induce the blender to spin by sounding the sounds of its motor in action. A person may growl low pitch blender-like sounds to get it to spin slow (Blendie pitch and power matches the person) and the person can growl blender-style at higher pitches to speed up Blendie. The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant. The participant empathizes with Blendie and in this new approach to a domestic appliance, a conscious and personally meaningful relationship is facilitated.

…but seriously, folks, what about areas in which it would be important to get into the mindset of an appliance? Have you never had the experience of trying to accomplish some task on a computer, and saying to yourself, “Now, where would they have put that function?”

If you speak the language of the computer (programming code), then you are a software programmer with the mindset of a blender anyway. Sorry. If you aren’t a software engineer, it’s a lot nicer to have the appliance go to the trouble of speaking your language rather than vice versa. Which is why the Macintosh OS is so much easier to use than DOS was.

Certainly when trying to understand other people and especially other cultures, we have to ask: Does speaking their language in fact help you to think their thoughts, feel their feelings? Yes, learning the language shows respect and facilitates communication, but does it run deeper than that?

Who couldn’t find a use for “neko-neko,” an Indonesian word for “one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse,” or “skeinkjari,” a term from the Faroe Islands for “the man who goes among wedding guests offering them alcohol”? Some words […] are surprisingly affecting, like the Inuit word “iktsuarpok,” which means “to go outside often to see if someone is coming.” And then there’s “tingo” itself, from the Pascuense language of Easter Island: “to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them.” (from Amazon.com’s description of The Meaning of Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod)

On a PRI Geo Quiz podcast, I heard the above author say there is a Norwegian word for dunking someone’s face in snow!

Having a word for an idea means you have the idea in your mind. Lack of words can result in lack of recognition of subtle distinctions and nuances. When one culture expresses these distinctions in its vocabulary and another doesn’t, important meaning gets lost in translation.

A very basic example that I’ve often noticed is in the Israeli and English words for “blue”. In English, we use blue as a general term for everything from pale sky to dark navy. In modern Hebrew, techelet is used for light blues, and kachol for darker blues. As a non-native Hebrew speaker, I have referred to an object as kachol only to get a blank look from the Israeli who can’t figure out what I’m pointing to; all he sees is something techelet. There is no mental equation of the terms; kachol and techelet are seen as distinct colors, just as blue and purple are to English speakers.

I’ve found that when someone behaves in a way that I’m having trouble interpreting, if I mimic the facial expression and tone of voice (no, not in front of them!), I can try and answer the question: “What feeling would I experience or thought would I think that would cause me to react this way?” Language is not always be expressed as words (hence the term “body language”).

Speaking the language -> understanding the mind.