I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so it can recognise them would be great.
Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.
Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.
I recently heard the best way to explain faceblindness: Apples.
Can you tell apples apart? Yes, sure, if you put two apples next to each other, they look similar, but there are differences.
But could you recognize that specific apple among 50 similar ones?
If an apple addressed you on the street, could you remember where you've seen it before?
That is how it feels to be faceblind.
There are workarounds, but they are context-dependent and error-prone.
That apple with red hair and a beard? Sure, that's the colleague from the office next door. But was that the same apple that waved to you in the city yesterday?
The only green apple among red ones? Easy to recognize. But only after some awkward misunderstandings you realize that there are two of them.
And changes of hairstyle are a real problem. I once wondered who that new colleague was during lunchbreak. I was about to ask her, when she said something (unrelated) and I recognized her voice. I had worked with her for 10 years, she had colored her hair.
I was in my late 20s when I realised I was "face-blind", but I should have realised a lot earlier, I remember reading in a book as a child about how "people can recognise a person by their face from a long distance, but find it difficult to recognise a voice", and I could not relate whatsoever to that passage.
I thought I regularly struggle to recognise someone until they start speaking, but it wasn't until a decade or two later that I read about prosopagnosia and then suddenly a lot of things made sense.
Your explanation is so much better than the rubbish illustrations of blanked or blurred faces, because it isn't like that at all, indeed sometimes I might rely on a detail about their face to recognise someone.
It's why face-blind isn't a great term either, because it's not a kind of blindness, I can see just as well as anyone, it just doesn't trip the automatic and instinctual recognition that I understand most people have.
As said above, if you do want a systemic solution, it needs a business plan. That's just the reality of a world with scarce resources.
It's a shame open source hardware isn't a thing in this area, but we've been here before. (Buying locked down devices and installing alt OSes.)
But reverse engineering isn't as easy as my snarky response implies. But I do think more of us should get into hardware hacking. It's the only way we have to fight back. I'm tired of this "own nothing" paradigm and being forced into whatever dumb thing they want is to do. And it's so dumb too. There's not many power users but there's a disproportionate amount of resources dedicated to fucking us over
Do they consider not being remembered rude? Do you get incredulous reactions like people with aphantasia?
Every once in a while I don't recognize someone and I go through this whole thing of bringing up every biographical detail about them I remember and all the things we've talked about to show that I'm not an asshole who wasn't paying attention in the past. Fortunately, I have a decent memory for such things.
Ironically, I'm insanely good at remembering faces. But it's kinda useless because of the name thing (and equally, the face context is also difficult).
The interaction described goes like this:
"Hi there, I'm ABC, nice to meet you, what's your name"
"...Huh? I'm XYZ. We've met before."
"Oh right...sorry, I promise I remember you! We knew each other from there, and we've worked on this and that together, and etc. etc. etc. I'm just terrible with faces, I'm so sorry!"
It's not "you know things about them without recognizing them"; it's "you don't recognize them at first, it gets awkward, and so you recite facts about them prove that you didn't forget who they were"
I think normal people are more likely to have the experience where they can't remember a name and why/how/where they know someone from. I of course forget things like anyone, but that's unrelated.
General body shape and height are ok. Hair, clothes, make-up, etc are not.
Context is everything. Where are they when we meet? If it is someone from work, at work, this is very easy. If it is someone from work in a shopping centre, this is very difficult unless I know them well.
I make an active point of trying to remember people's faces so I can place them out of context, because it shouldnt be this hard, and they deserve to feel valued in so far as I remember them. Its an uphill battle.
It's not like you can't tell your wife apart from your orthodontist.
It's something I've had my whole life but only recently realized wasn't "normal". It's not like I can't recognize people at all, but rather that faces aren't very distinctive to me compared to other identifying characteristics (such as hair color/style/length, clothing, skin tone, height, voice, gait, mannerisms, etc.) It takes me a while to learn to distinguish everyone in a group of people (especially people who are similar along all of those attributes), but once I know someone well I will usually recognize them without problems.
The only real issues are when someone changes their appearance (e.g. getting glasses or shaving a beard), or when I run into someone in an unexpected context (like randomly meeting someone I know on the street). A few months ago I ran into my cousin at an event in another city, and didn't recognize her until after 20 or 30 seconds of conversation.
It's also not usually too hard to mask. I realized I have a subconscious habit of never greeting people by name because I'm always afraid of getting it wrong, and it's easy enough to bluff through "oh hi, how are you, good to see you, what have you been up to" pleasantries until I figure out who I'm talking to. The most awkward situations are when I'm unsure whether or not I know someone and have to risk either mistaking a stranger for a friend, or accidentally ignoring/reintroducing myself to an acquaintance. Also, starting a new TV show sucks.
Now that I know it's an actual condition with a name, I'm not sure yet whether it makes things better or worse if I try to explain it to people to excuse my mistakes.
If any other face blind people have useful tips or experiences, I'm all ears :)
If someone talks to you and you're not sure who they are, tell them you're faceblind and ask. It takes some getting used to, but it's worth it.
In my previous company we gave a short introduction when joining, and I included faceblindness. "If I meet you randomly on the street and don't say hello, that's not with malicious intent."
Most people are understanding, though a few are not, but really then it's their problem.
I got a personal kick out of that example, because one of my good friend's wife is his orthodontist :-D
Online comparison just adds latency.