Friday, May 03, 2013

How the Internet saved people who stutter

I know that I have not been following up on my video posts. My apologies. I have been and will be quite busy and need to rethink my video-blog strategy. ;-)

Today I want to talk about the Internet and how it has revolutionized our lives in several ways.

Email was just the gift from heaven for me, because I did not have to call people or go to them and explain in spoken words. I could just write an email, fine-tune the email, and send it off. I felt like a normal person not impeded by my stuttering. Of course, that led to all kind of other problems, because now all the bad things that happened to me in response to an email could not be blamed to stuttering! Including unsuccessful talking to girls!

Blogging was another gift, as I could reach the whole community and again was not limited by my speaking. Again. That led to all kinds of other problems, as I decided to say whatever I had on my mind. Maybe as a reaction to all the things that I had on my mind but could not say in all those years. The barrage of to-be-told ideas broke.

The Internet in general provided me with the perfect source of information on stuttering. I could email people, they could email me, I could read all kinds of scientific articles, I could get into other people's mind by reading their first-person experiences, and I could influence the thinking of many people. And it opened up a level playing field to challenge those in positions of power in academic research or therapy that thought they were the God.

Facebook was not really a gift for me. I already had email and blogging to express myself. In fact, Facebook is democratisation of the Internet taking one step too far. Nowadays, everyone can just post anything on stuttering. Millions of logical fallacies which drive me insane. Even more so, because they are inextricably entangled with many interesting and diverse experiences of people who stutter. As I always say, your experience of stuttering is your experience and true on its own, but your interpretation of your stuttering, i.e. its causes and its treatments, is mostly likely marred with fallacies. Any reasonable message is drowned in the vast amount of messages. It's a bit like at stuttering conferences...


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Internet is my life.
It has given me everything :)
MONEY,LOVE,KNOWLEDGE,FREEDOM.

No Internet + My Stuttering = TRAGEDY :(

Just kidding. Life would not be as nice as it is now.

Thank You God For Internet.

No comments on Facebook since i do not have a account. Its a waste of time. There are better things to do than look at whats happening with others.

As my friend says.
"Everyone has problems in life and they are busy with their own life."
So True :)

Ora said...

I imagine that many stutterers have found email a real godsend.

Your experience resonates with me. My own stuttering has been really bad at certain times in my life, and email has allowed me to be effective nonetheless.

Unknown said...

I cannot agree more. Funny thing just before reading your comment I had to call and leave a voice mail to a colleague. It wasn’t easy the phone is still one of my weakness.

To make it more difficult, people do not know I stutter because I am now able to speak fluidly in most normal situations.

But I cannot master the phone call So people react strongly to my stuttering because they are not aware of my stuttering.

Orange County speech therapy said...

Thank you for this post. Indeed, the Internet has brought so much convenience in our lives that it is not merely being used for searching but is utilized in several other beneficial ways such as for online speech therapy. I do hope that it will even serve other useful purposes in the near future.