VIVO Voice-In / Voice-Out. William Crossman
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usually respond with anxious questions and comments, including the following. If most people won’t be able to read and write by mid-21st Century, won’t the power elite then be able to reserve written language for themselves and use it to keep information from the general population? And won’t this create a society where a small number of people wield power and control over everybody else?
My answer is that this is the situation that we have today, and it is the situation that we have had since the creation of written language 10,000 years ago. The great majority of the world’s population is still being deprived of literacy skills because those in power continue to view literacy as a privilege rather than a right. In the 21st Century, however, the power elites themselves will choose speech and VIVOs over text and text-driven computers to access information and to attempt to control its flow.
On the positive side, I see VIVOs opening up specific potential opportunities for the Have-Nots of the world: opportunities for accessing information that was formerly accessible only to the print-literate, opportunities for instantaneous translation of speech from one language to another, and opportunities for people with disabilities to access information without having to read and write it. It all depends, of course, on whether the Have-Nots will be able to gain access to talking computers.
I, like many people I know, dream of—and, through our actions, try to bring about—a world where freedom, equality, justice, and peace reign. It is not this dream that I’m questioning throughout this book; I’m questioning whether written language is the best technology for accessing the information that we’ll need to make this dream come true.
Using written language, I am able to communicate with only 20 percent of the world’s people—the 20 percent that is functionally literate—which is not nearly enough people to realize this dream. Using a VIVO, I will be able to communicate with everyone, nonliterate or literate, with disabilities or without, who has access to a VIVO. Though it will take more than mere communicating to achieve freedom, equality, justice, and peace, being able to break through the text barrier and communicate with greater numbers of people isn’t a bad place to start.
In Chapter 1 of this book, I say that I admire and respect everyone who is struggling to acquire literacy skills, and I urge everyone to go to school, stay in school, and learn to read and write. For the next decade or so, the ability to write and read will still be necessary to access information that will be available mainly in the form of text. After that, literacy skills will become less and less important as talking computers supersede the written word.
When I started developing this book’s main ideas in 1992, the voice-recognition technology wave was barely visible on the horizon, and everyone I spoke to about VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]’s thesis treated it as science fiction. Perhaps, to some degree, I did too. Now that the wave is starting to break over our heads, its force, and the places to which it will carry us, are becoming clearer and more real, less fictitious but equally fantastic.
I’ve chosen a less formal style for VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]—one closer to ordinary speech than to academic writing. I hope readers will appreciate the chance to retrieve the stored information here with your minds’ ears as well as your eyes—a good exercise in VIVOlutionary learning.
I invite readers to communicate with me and others about this book’s ideas. Tell your VIVOs to access the website for my CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures. Speak your minds, and journey well!
Prologue
No Words on Their Cereal Box: A Day in the Life of a 21st Century Oral-Culture Family
It’s a cool Thursday morning in March, 2050. The family’s voice-in/voice-out—VIVO—computers begin to serenade Kathy and her children, Mary Beth and Thomas, with wake-up music. Their VIVOs, like all talking computers in 2050, lack keyboards because information exchange is text-free. Data and commands are inputted by voice; outputted data is heard and seen, but not read.
This morning, however, the serenading VIVOs don’t appear to be heard by Kathy and the children. No one is budging. Getting up at 7:00 a.m. in the year 2050 isn’t any easier than it was in 2005. After five minutes, with everyone still in bed, the VIVOs change their music menu to something louder and livelier. Five more minutes go by without anyone stirring.
Now the computers get serious, junking their musical approach for some strong verbal encouragement. Kathy hates hearing this particular spoken message because it mimics the words and tone that her own parents used to use to wake her when she was a child—which is exactly why Kathy programmed their VIVOs with that message. Ten seconds of the VIVOs’ parental scolding is enough to pry everyone out of bed.
Kathy starts to ask her VIVO what time it is but has a coughing fit instead, so she glances over at the visual time display on her VIVO’s screen. Lacking written numerals, it shows the 07:10 time as
Kathy, Mary Beth, and Thomas shower, dress, and, head to the kitchen for breakfast. Thomas reaches for the cereal box and fills his bowl. The box is covered with eye-catching holographics, but no writing, no words. None of the other food packaging on the table has writing on it either. Along with its graphics, each package sports a brand-identification symbol and, in place of the old 20th Century bar code, Kathy’s DNA code, which allows the food suppliers to electronically fill, price, bill, and deliver the goods that Kathy ordered online using her VIVO. Neither Thomas nor Mary Beth has ever read a cereal box.
The absence of written language isn’t limited to the time display on Kathy’s bedside VIVO and the food packaging in the kitchen. This family’s apartment is no different from most other families’ apartments in mid-21st Century electronically-developed countries: written language doesn’t appear anywhere. Like almost all of their neighbors, co-workers, and schoolmates, Kathy, Mary Beth, and Thomas can’t read or write.
Neither twelve-year-old Mary Beth, who is finishing her last year of college, nor Thomas, age 4, who is completing fifth grade, has ever learned to write or read. Kathy’s schools didn’t teach writing or reading either, but thinking that it would be fun to learn, she joined an extra-curricular Written Language Club for a year when she was ten and became quite expert at writing and reading.
Now, though, she has forgotten almost all the written language that she learned because she hasn’t practiced or used it in over twenty-five years. Kathy keeps telling her friends that if her children ever decided to take up reading and writing as a hobby, then maybe she’d join them and get back into it again. Uh-huh, Kathy, we’ll believe it when we see it.
When breakfast is over, Kathy moves to her favorite chair and asks her satellite-driven VIVO to recite her new messages and display their accompanying graphics on her wall screen. Kathy finds it hard to believe that, only forty-five years ago, people were still writing and reading e-mail and letter carriers were still placing letters in people’s home mailboxes.
After she listens to her messages, Kathy will spend the rest of the morning at home working at her job: mentally composing her daily online spoken “op-ed column” and then reciting it into her VIVO. She’s amused that her daily “journalistic” recitations are still referred to in the old 20th Century print terms, but her bosses at the Daily Post Access believe that promoting her spoken pieces as “op-ed columns” adds a quaint touch that attracts a larger audience. The irony is that very few of the people who regularly access Kathy’s views on the Daily Post Access even know what the words “op-ed” or “column” (not to mention “Post” or “journalistic”) mean or refer to.
Mary Beth checks her new messages on her wrist VIVO and on the tiny flipdown graphics monitor lodged in her cap’s visor, then waves goodbye, rushes out the door, jumps on her bicycle, and heads off to soccer practice. Her backpack is stuffed with her shin guards and cleats, her lunch, and her hand