The Speakularity, Where Everything You Say Is Transcribed and Searchable 74
An anonymous reader sends an article from Nautilus about the possible future of speech recognition software. Today, hundreds of millions of people are walking around with devices that can not only record sound, but also do a decent job of turning spoken word into searchable text. The article makes the case that the recording and transcription of normal conversation will become commonplace, sooner or later. Not only would this potentially make a lot more interesting discussion available beyond earshot, but it could also facilitate information retrieval on a personal level.
The article makes an analogy with email — right now, if you communicated with somebody through email a decade ago, you don't have to remember the specifics — as long as you didn't delete it or switch email providers, you can just search and look at exactly what was said. Of course, the power of such technology comes with trade-offs — not only would we be worried about the obvious privacy issues, but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. Some researchers also worry that if we have technology to remember for us, we'll put much less effort into remembering things ourselves.
The article makes an analogy with email — right now, if you communicated with somebody through email a decade ago, you don't have to remember the specifics — as long as you didn't delete it or switch email providers, you can just search and look at exactly what was said. Of course, the power of such technology comes with trade-offs — not only would we be worried about the obvious privacy issues, but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. Some researchers also worry that if we have technology to remember for us, we'll put much less effort into remembering things ourselves.
Probably not (Score:3)
Not everything that is technically feasible becomes commonplace. Despite increasingly clever marketing creating artificial demands, people still tend to have their own mind.
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And what could possibly go wrong?
Dear Aunt [brilliantdays.com] ...
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Funny. Also precisely on target.
When speech recognition gets "decent", as TFS inaccurately states, which is to say, when it's good enough to understand me as well as a human does, then a lot of things will change. For instance, I wouldn't be typing this on a keyboard. I'd be speaking, which is quite a bit faster than typing. Probably never touch my phone other than to slip it into a pocket. Especially after there's a decent, power-efficient wearable display, or an in-eye projection, in front of face hol
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So no, right now it's not terribly feasible because there are not enough servers to handle more than specific requests.
Besides, how narcissistic is it to document every moment, and who's going to want to review all of that? The only use that I see for such technology is to spy on everyone Stasi-style. Think of the scen
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Thing of it is, it's not the phone that's interpreting the voice, it's servers at the other end of a long network connection that take the recorded sound bite and convert it into text.
So no, right now it's not terribly feasible because there are not enough servers to handle more than specific requests.
We know the NSA records every phone call, transcribes everything, and has a searchable DB, for multiple countries including the US, thanks to the Snowden leaks. Voice just isn't that much data, when you buy drives and servers in billion-dollar lots. Your tax dollars at work.
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True, but consider this:
- We are already all caught on video dozens of times per day.
- Your smart phone already listens to everything you say, in case you might say some key word that it needs to react to.
- Newer TVs and other electronic devices are becoming more voice activated.
The trend is definitely in the direction of more surveillance. It's just a matter of time before that includes audio, as well as video.
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No. No, my phone does not. Does anyone actually run down their battery and keep their phone unlocked and vulnerable to keep some voice-activated app always running?
A pointless gimmick that's a usability fail. [cnet.com]
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Your phone is always awake, or can be, which is to say, the CPU running, albeit in a lower power state. From there, it takes very little energy to simply record what the mic is picking up. It doesn't need to be translated, and it can be sent, compressed, at widely spaced intervals in terms of battery load. It could be sent while you are otherwise connected. You'd be unlikely to notice a difference in power consumption.
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Your phone can listen to you even when it is locked.
But you are missing the point. Even if we are not quite there yet, we are a very, very short distance from being listened to constantly.
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The government doesn't obey the law.
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And the thing that made it even funnier, the old lady that said "Hey, I speak jive"..was the lady that played June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, about the whitest lady you could find at the time!!
Ah...man, I bet in today's ultra PC society, you'd never get a movie like Airplane made again.
There's lots of great movies that likely could not be made today. I don't think Fast Times at Ridgemont High could get made today since it portrayed underage teen sex....
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too late on the memory thing (Score:1)
Email archives (Score:3)
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Paging Tom Scott (Score:3)
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I learned this as well. Best long term storage because it is readable by any mail program is by using Thunderbird. Outlook can do integrity checks on a mailbox, but only it can use its own format.
Then there is finding a compressing/archiving format. WinRAR or tar/xz/par are good options for this. This way, the mail spool with 100-200 gigs of spam gets reduced by an order of magnitude at the minimum.
As for storage? Different media. One copy on DVD, one on an external HDD, and perhaps one stashed on Ama
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Just store it as plain text. That way you avoid the silly pictures, the 'signatures' that take up a whole screen and a couple of megabytes.
And Comic Sans.
It's way better to get rid of Comic Sans.
I have 1990s email. Email client, not webmail (Score:2)
If you use an email client for email, rather than a web browser, there's little reason you wouldn't have email from a decade ago handy. Unless you choose to delete the local copies, of course. What I do, is every year or two I make a subfolder under Sentbox, Sentbox/2012-213/ and drag the old emails there. Folders other than Sentbox and Trash generally don't get subfolders, "eBay receipts" has everything I've ever bought and sold on ebay.
Many people who use IMAP have it set to delete the local copies a
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The decade ago email doesn't work. Over a few years and a few different email systems that you were using your email archive will become lost or unusable in that time frame.
So good luck with that.
Luck?
One doesn't need "luck" anymore when the online world has access to free webmail, which is also pretty much unlimited in storage capacity with every offering. I've already got a decades worth of email stored in the cloud, instantly searchable. There are also several solutions available to consolidate other email into a single platform/solution, eliminating the burden of managing multiple email systems.
And if you're concerned about those free webmail services going away, let's be realistic here. They
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Certainly would promote responsible speech (or at least greater caution)
Yes - just like slashdot archives promote responsible speech ... Oh Wait!
Seriously the fun starts when they have reliable transcription and speech recognition!
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Are you seriously thinking that THAT is something we need?
Right now, people are getting too scared to say much of anything which is the direct opposite of what we need.
We need lots of speech, we need more speech that you and others may disagree with....
If we keep getting fearful or overthinking what we say...eventually nothing useful gets said anymore.
"Responsible" speech...WTF is that anyway?
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"Certainly would promote responsible speech (or at least greater caution)"
And new legislation. Depending upon what state you are in, recording audio undisclosed is against the law. Third party disclosure of undisclosed recordings is another matter in itself.
How long before the fist lawsuit (or arrest) over undisclosed text copy of a conversation? I hope soon, if I hear one more done story, I'm going to barf!
I never said that. (Score:2)
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Looking forward to this tech evening up arguments with my wife.
Sometimes its not worth winning the argument. Even if you could prove that she said something different a smile and "well if that's what you think now then that's what counts" is a better approach
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We can also conceive of the SEEgularity (Score:3)
That's when the successors to Google glass not only deliver images to our eyes but also monitor them at the same time and record what we're looking at.
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Followed by the seguelarity where every time you voice a thought, someone uses it to change the subject.
Part of a trend (Score:1)
OK Google (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds crazy but are we really that far behind with always listening devices? Imagine brand recognition or "need fulfillment" services pinging off everything you say
"Man, it's hot out" translates into a device showing a Coke advert. I feel like this isn't far off
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"Man, it's hot out" translates into a device showing a Coke advert. I feel like this isn't far off
I agree, but the way the technology stumbles before it gets perfected.
It will probably be an advertisement for a hot man at a Chip N Dale club. The second time you say it, you'll be more careful enunciating it, but then it will be your Nest thermostat that starts cooling down the inside of your place (not having fully understood the "out" in your statement, when you were obviously just "in" when you said it).
Eventually, you'll just learn to shut up whenever you're in range of that microphone, and you'll be
Black Mirror (Score:2)
If you have not seen it, I would suggest watching Black Mirror TV series. Season 2 Episode 1 (usual wikipedia spoilers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) is about similar subject - having devices which record everything you see and hear and being able to replay it all at any point.
It's already here (Score:2)
>> having devices which record everything you see and hear
Those are called cell phones. And Windows 10 machines (soon to be backported to Windows 7/8).
>> being able to replay it all at any point
I think we know who already has those.
sign me up (Score:1)
I have every email sent & received since '94, all in mbox format by year by email address. Easy to do and it comes in handy. Why not record conversations too!
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I have every email sent & received since '94, all in mbox format by year by email address. Easy to do and it comes in handy. Why not record conversations too!
Curious as to how a 20-year old email comes in handy for you. Or even a 15-year old one.
And yes, it's a serious question, as it helps justify this mentality. Consider the fact we're the last generation to even remember what life is like without a constant barrage of electronic communications, and have a finite amount of data to identify and archive. For future generations, the start and end points to their data archives will be their birth announcement and their obituary. And you already know I'm not be
The future is now (Score:2)
"but many people may feel restricted by always "performing" for the microphones. "
You'd better already be that _today_. Not only the NSA listens, as we lately discovered, depending on where you live, half the time you are phoning over one of the police's illegal stingray 'cell-towers'.
So, don't talk about tax-evasion, drug orders or merchandise that 'fell off the truck' and so on.
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Everything you say *can* and *will* be used against you...
A Lawyer's wet dream (Score:1)
Just think about a law suit where discovery has started. Anything that you had recorded and could be searched with be a record that the court could require you to produce. Talk about hanging yourself......
One less day (Score:3)
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Do not go to bed. You talk too much when you sleep.
A positive light (Score:2)
The Speakularity? (Score:2)
Yeah, that just rolls off the tongue...
Don't quit your day job. Unless you're in marketing, in which case you should quit because you're terrible at it.
Perfect recall (Score:2)
you can just search and look at exactly what was said
Excepting Secretaries of State, of course.
I just aliased the reformat command to the word 'Benghazi'.
Ah, the good ole days (Score:4, Insightful)
Cloud storage of everything i ever spoke/thought.. (Score:1)
Deal With It (Score:2)