webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (01/04/90)
Assuming that technological growth in cheap processing power and fast storage
will allow relatively brute force extrapolation of current 100 word voice
recognition systems into reasonably full natural language voice recognition,
the following will happen:
1) Managers who have traditionally resisted keyboard interfaces will
embrace voice interfaces after a Harvard Business School study shows
that the increased tension/hostility traditionally associated with
email communication networks is reduced/nullified by voice input and
output.
2) Said managers will use a system that receives their normal voice,
translates it to standard text, converts the standard text to an
authorative professionally-trained voice style (with an interactive
editor where the system plays the speech back to the user who supplies
comments about where emphasis, etc., should be adjusted). Employees
will translate said pronouncements into text and then play them through
an Elmer Fudd synthesizer.
3) 60% of the messages on Usenet will have been filtered thru a system
based on data extracted Kathleen Turner's Jessica Rabbit voice from a
Roger Rabbit video tape before posting. This will result in a major
lawsuit from Touchstone Pictures that will result in the death of Usenet
news (but this will be little felt since there will be sufficient
bandwith to maintain million reader mailing lists).
4) Directional microphones and whispering will solve most of the problems
traditionally supposed for voice i/o. Federal Building codes will
require one water fountain per 100 square feet of inhabited floor
space. Water quality of said fountains will be a major health issue.
The manufacture of throat lounges will be a major growth industry.
5) People who interact with computers more than 4 hours per day will
increasingly resort to surgical implant of sensors near the
muscle groups controlling voice and use subvocalization for
computer interaction.
6) Muscle problems associated with typing will decrease. This will
make computer screens a focal point of health complaints. Standard
computer interfaces will abandon reliance on computer screens. Usage
of screens will be comparable to usage of blackboards and scratch paper.
Some people will find it necessary to see what they are doing in order
to think it out. Others will be doing things that don't require this.
Still others will simply have better memories and not see the point
of using screens (people capable of memorizing plays/poems/... will
have a sought-after skill).
7) A history of the twentieth century will be written, submitted to a
major publisher, and become a paperback best seller by a person
who never ``saw'' any version of the book. Said person will
have done all the work associated with the book while tending to
a private vegetable garden. The importance of food production technology
in the twentieth century will be a major theme of the book.
8) Most of the conversion of printed texts to computer manipulability
will be accomplished by people subvocalizing while reading said
texts (Library of Congress tapes for the blind will be quickly
brought online). It will be observed that most people read faster
and remember longer texts that they read out loud. Many studies
be will done on verbal versus visual thinking. Much confusion
will result.
9) Books will be printed with numbered paragraphs so that spoken notes
can be easily associated with specific locations in the text. This
will be the standard way scholars record comments on articles/books
that they read. Hypertext will never make it, but there will be a
revival of printing books with marginal notes (occasionally this will
be nested so that a page will show a portion of text, commentary on
that text, and finally commentary on the commentary via nested margins).
Many books will be printed on demand and then recycled as soon
as read (bookstores will collect deposits on books sold).
10) Studies indicating the emotional persuasiveness of vocal communication
will ensure that there will be an elite group of people who force
vocal communications into text form before considering their content.
What began as a preference in the handling of computer vocal mail will
extend to face-to-face vocal communications (some people will
intentionally deafen themselves to the actual aural transmission and
refer only to the derivative text form).
11) Recording every word one says during the day and reviewing it
at evening will become a major fad among the elite. Family
therapists will recommend the sharing of such tapes among
family members. The discussion of the advisability of sharing
such tapes with a person one is dating will be a major topic
of discussion in net.singles.
12) The study of verbal behavior will become a recognized social
science and a common liberal arts major -- it will be called
Rhetorictology.
13) Parents will outfit children with verbal recorders with the intent
that the children will grow up with access to every word they spoke
or heard in their lifetime.
14) Privacy issues associated with verbal recordings will be handled
primarily by the honor system. There will be a number of people
who will refuse to have anything to do with this technology due
to this problem. Many laws will be passed. There will be much
confusion.
15) A common device for ``securing'' one's personal records will be
to encrypt them and enter the key via a small keypad that one
accesses by reaching into the enclosure of the recording device
(so that the motions are not visible to anyone nearby). Said
key will be forgotten by the system (along with all decrypted
material in buffers) as soon as the last key in the series is
released.
16) A large number of people will go to jail for refusing to tell
a court what their encryption key was. Some courts will hold
that erasing records when arrested constitutes tampering with
evidence. Many laws will be passed. There will be much
confusion.
--- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)scratch@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Steven J Owens) (01/18/90)
In article <Jan.4.04.56.04.1990.10021@porthos.rutgers.edu> webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes: > Employees will translate said pronouncements into text and then play them > through an Elmer Fudd synthesizer. > 3) 60% of the messages on Usenet will have been filtered thru a system > based on data extracted Kathleen Turner's Jessica Rabbit voice from a Roger > Rabbit video tape before posting. Cute, really cute... > 12) The study of verbal behavior will become a recognized social > science and a common liberal arts major -- it will be called > Rhetorictology. Where're the smileys?? As a communications major, having taken classes such as Theory of Rhetoric and Rhetorical Processes, I'm afraid I find this idea of yours a bit quaint, but amusing. It may well be that the rise of voice-controlled computers and the new availability of hard data to base research on may pump new life into solid applied research on rhetorical processes. And a new area of specialty pertaining to those specific proceses may well come into being. But I think you'll find that there are already plenty of people who have worked in that area - you'd be amazed at what has already been learned about interpersonal communication, something which people take very much for granted. I have some comments about a possible direction for computer interfacing, but I'll post that separately... Steven J. Owens | Scratch@Pittvms | Scratch@unix.cis.pitt.edu "There's a long hard road and a full, hard drive / And a sector there where I feel alive / Every bit of every byte / Is written down once on the night / Networking, I'm user friendly..." -- Warren Zevon, Networking, Transverse City