James Whatley has a thought provoking meandering thought over at the Spinvox blog, regarding the future of voice. With a service such as Spinvox, people’s voices are being converted into text. Sounds simple enough, but this actually affects quite a bit of stuff. It means that voice is now searchable, archivable.
James goes on about what your voice will *look* like, but honestly, that’s not what made me start thinking. The other part, where your spoken word is recorded and searchable, is completely fascinating. Working with Nokia on the S60 Ambassador program, we’re basically interested in the same thing – recording voice conversations (as reports) and tracking them, seeing what people are talking about, how others react, that sort of thing.
Used to, things that you said were safe. Spoken word is there, and then gone. Of course, it resides in the memory of the people present, but there it’s vulnerable to being erased (forgotten), misinterpreted, distorted, etc. When you convert speech into text, though, those limitations are removed.
How will this idea grow and progress? What is the actual ‘future of voice’?
Ricky Cadden 