No doubt you read my previous post on the future of voice, and had your thoughts provoked – however, since then, SpinVox have hosted a session on the future of voice. Their chief of “Interweb bloggery”, James Whatley, was present, along with their VP of consumer business, James Scroggs.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, due to being “logistically challenged” – however, by all accounts it was a great session, with some excellent points raised. I draw your attention to the lead-in statement made by James Scroggs:
“I’ve long held that people have lost their voice – call it the stuttering of the democratic process, not in having a right to vote or the mechanic to do so, but the real sense that a person’s voice can count for something, be purposeful, weighty, and heard amongst the din of Rice Crispy culture and politics.
I spent five years at MTV striving to have a 25 year old brand continue to earn its place as a platform for young people to have a voice in a formalised broadcast environment, while YouTube and the new social nooks and crannies became the new playground.
Now I find myself in the realms of a brilliant system, SpinVox, that can make the human voice matter again. How? Because SpinVox takes a voice – literally the energy in motion of particles in the air – and converts it into text data. That data can then be posted as content into the digital world.
It’s a revolution: for me, voice is the last human faculty that has not been obfuscated or complicated by the advances of science. It remains entirely naked, and therefore a pure expression of your ID, your self.
If only 30% of the language processed by our system is Dictionary-documented, then the complexities and personalities contained in the spoken language and vernacular suggest that the voice continues to be an immensely powerful tool for us all to emotional connect with each other, create and find social order.
So what is the future of voice?
What’s is its summit of its mountainous journey?”
It raises some questions, I’m sure you’ll agree. For more detail on the session, hop on over to the SpinVox site, and check out the blog write-up. Whilst you are there, check out the SpinVox service too – if your country is covered, I recommend signing up – voice-to-text (in my opinion) is a killer app for the mass-market!
Ben