A world without sight.

Let's say we have humanity, and humanity has no extra strengths or senses.

No let's say they are blind.

How would such a world work? What would the internet be like? How would objects be described to one another? What would we find attractive?

And so on.

I'd imagine the phrases "who the hell is in me?!" and "who the hell am I fucking?" would be used way more often.

You know, this has troubled me too.

Hmm, it would be possible to impersonate people by mimicking their voices, wouldn't it?

Well it is an interesting concept.

edited 1st Feb '11 8:06:16 PM by TheMightyAnonym

At least the braille on the drive-up ATM buttons would make sense then.

I don't think it would be as different as you think.

Although it mainly depends on how long you give society to adapt. If everyone is instantly blinded, our transportation system grinds to a halt, but a society that was blind from the start would likely have invented an equally efficient, but completely different system.

^ In case you actually care, the reason for that is mass production. It's cheaper to just make all AT Ms the same way.

edited 1st Feb '11 9:40:10 PM by storyyeller

We would have better smell to distinguish people.

One think to consider, if people were blind to begin with what would happen to the area that the human mind dedicates to visual stimuli? Would that area be used for the other senses?

Also, the chances are we would be completely unable to create a society as we know it without vision, we would be animals in the dark, always.

If humans where blinded in one go society would collapse, even without the man eating plants taking over (The Day Of The Triffids)

Gradual blindness.. I'd like to think we would adapt but I really thing it just would be a slower collapse, with those with better sight stealing from those already blind.

On a more positive note technologies like 'speaking' readers for books and audio books would have a huge increase in sales.

edited 2nd Feb '11 2:57:10 AM by MCE

^ Why would blind people be unable to form a society?

Are we saying that every person on earth suddenly becomes blind or is humanity blind from the beginning?

If the former, a majority of humanity will die. You've just blinded an entire species, so at the time of the event you've killed just about everyone in a plane, train, automobile, and anyone who might have been standing near a street. A large number of people that are out walking will injure themselves, nobody will be able to help them, so they will die. All the people currently in surgery or intensive care, dead.

There will be mass panic, a large portion of our technology is dependent on sight. This is not just a disaster. To many it will be the end of days. Within the first month, after the religious hysteria, the starvations, possible nuclear launches and infrastructure failure a majority of humanity will be dead or dying. Society will just break down. Disease will be rampant from all the dead in the streets; there will be very few who are capable of giving medical care to others.

The only individuals with a hope of survival are those learned to cope with blindness before the event. Even they will have difficulties, because often they rely on the rest of society to provide them with some help.

So, if humanity survives, it will be reduced to a bunch of hunter-gatherers struggling to survive.

edited 2nd Feb '11 7:32:25 AM by Pentadragon

Don't you mean the former, not the latter?

Blindness. It's a novel and a film.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness_(film)

edited 2nd Feb '11 7:13:43 AM by Grain

^^ Yes, sorry.

storyyeller: Why would blind people be unable to form a society?

I'm guessing. If everyone was born blind they may be able to form a society, but not one similar to our modern one, which is reliant on the majority of people being sighted. Language and culture would be slow to develop and pass on, even if we could invent a primitive form of Braille. There is also the fact that without sight things like the ability to visualise could be compromised.

There was a study that showed even people born blind could visualize objects in 3d.

It's just that you'll conceptually map it by touch instead of by sight, I definitely believe it.

I kind of like methodically scurrying about in the dark, I'd make a great mole-person. Probably because I'm blind in one eye, I've got a really sharp sense of hearing though, thankfully.

Are we saying that every person on earth suddenly becomes blind or is humanity blind from the beginning?

The latter. It's pretty obvious we'd be mostly screwed if we all became suddenly blinded; thus the the version where everyone has always been blind is way more interesting. I'll also stipulate that they are just as advanced as we are now.

We'd be fighting poisionous ambulatory plants.

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:10:11 PM by HungryJoe

There's an H.G. Wells short story with that topic - haven't read it in a while, but it was quite disturbing: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11870

Humans would most likely not exist at all if no living thing ever developed sight. Since becoming sapient tool users was more or less a fluke anyway, civilization would most likely never have developed, and the entire ecosystem would be radically different.

To get an idea of how a blind society would do things, read up on accomodations for the blind, and imagine if those were generally used by everyone.

. . . Or don't. People seem to have this misconception that blind people don't have anything to make up for what they lack. The massive, ridiculously huge amount of brainpower focused on sight wouldn't just go away, it would be redirected. ESPECIALLY if we were like that from the beginning, and the way our brain is wired by default would evolve.

Relevant: Echolocation. There are some blind people who can use a rudimentary form of echolocation based on clicking their tongues rapidly and focusing on the sound bouncing off things.

EDIT: On impersonation: No. Everyone has a unique scent. It might be possible to confuse two people in a nuclear family if you weren't paying much attention, but yeah.

edited 3rd Feb '11 5:01:00 PM by Diamonnes

Presumably, if people never evolved sight in the first place for some reason, they would have evolved other senses that are extremely sharp. I'm thinking though, since we are not nocturnal animals and the earth is bathed in electromagnetic radiation during the day, it'd be pretty strange for us to not adapt to this and evolve some sort of organs of sight, so I'll assume that if humanity is blind, it's because we live someplace with little light (everyone lives in caves for some reason? :P). Obvously, this different environment would also affect our worldview and everything.

Maybe we live underground and only come up at night, like groundhogs or prarie dogs? In that case, we would probably have very honed senses of touch, smell, and hearing. We might all be Tophs, hearing with vibrations or echolocation. Our civilization would have evolved very differently, but there's no reason it couldn't be just as complex and advanced. Instead of building up from the surface, we'd tunnel down from the surface, and build high-tech low-falls, instead of high-rises. We would probably have just naturally invented Braille rather than conventional written language, and maybe we would have gotten developments like the radio and the tape recorder sooner.

Great, we get to be friggin' Morlocks. I'll keep my eyes, I think.