INTERVIEW:
Question 1
You have written a book entitled CompSpeak 2050: How Talking Computers
will Recreate an Oral Culture by Mid-21st Century. Why will talking
computers, in your opinion, lead us to an oral culture?
Answer
First of all, we are on the brink of a major step forward in computing,
with the use of voice-recognition, talking computers. I call them VIVOs,
for Voice In/Voice Out computers. We are talking about computers that
don't use any text and have no keyboard: all information is transferred,
stored and retrieved by speaking, listening and looking at visual
displays. There is a huge need for a breakthrough in literacy in the
print-literate countries which also tend to be the electronically
developed countries. If you look at the declining literacy rates here in
the United States, if you look at why so many people would rather watch
TV than read a book, would make a phone call before they would sit down
and write a letter, you understand that reading and writing is in big
trouble in this country. I think that there are two engines driving a
move away from print culture to oral culture in the electronically
developed print-literate countries: the first is technological, and the
second is evolutionary. I want to talk about each one of those
separately. If we look at the technology, for example, we see that
written language itself is a technology; a technology that was created
six thousand to ten thousand years ago to deal with a specific set of
historical conditions, particularly the move from a nomadic society to
an agricultural and herding society. With that change came an enormous
need for the ability to store new information. At that moment in history
a creative solution was found by people who were settling land, becoming
planters and herds people. That solution was the creation of written
language, a technology which was devised to store and retrieve the new
wave of information. Now we have new technology that can supersede that.
Reading and writing is now obsolete; alphabets, spelling, grammar rules,
even written numerals - because I am talking about oral written
notational systems - are going to disappear. They are going to be
quickly replaced by a technology that is more efficient, more universal,
cheaper, quicker and easier. That technology is a technology that is not
a technology at all: it's our ability to speak, which is as basic to
human existence as our circulatory systems.
Question 2
Don't you think that the tendency to believe that new technology will
"abolish" the old ones has already proved to be wrong, if we
look back in time? Don't you think that multimedia is precisely the
co-existence of different media and, of course, of new and
"old" ways to communicate?
Answer
No, actually I think that computer technologies and the multimedia are
perfect examples of how new technology displaces and renders obsolete
the old technology. The wax cylinder phonogram was replaced by vinyl
records, then cassette tapes, now we have CDs and everybody is throwing
away their old technology. In fact, in the media this is more apparent
than in almost any other set of technologies. We had the scythe to cut a
grass, but we threw that away because we had a push lawnmower, and now
people in the United States are throwing away their lawnmower and
getting gas-powered lawnmowers. One by one the new technology replaces
the old, makes it redundant. We take the technology that is the easiest,
most efficient, most up to date, and we use it. As far as talking
computers go, my argument is that we are going to be able to store and
retrieve information more cheaply, more universally, more efficiently,
quickly, easily, using talking computers with visual displays. When we
use written language, we write something down to store it and then we
read it to retrieve that information. This technology was created to
deal with a specific set of historical conditions and is a transitory
technology. We tend to think of written language as like air and water,
and sleep and food as a basic need, and every society aspires to become
a literate society. But it was just an older technology, and like any
technology, it gets surpassed by new technology which makes it obsolete.
That is the technological reason why we are moving toward an oral
culture. Talking computers, VIVOs, Voice In/Voice Out computers with no
text, where we speak and listen and look at visual displays, can do
exactly same work as reading and writing can do, and everyone will be
able to do it. Right now, 80% of the world's population is non-literate,
or functionally non-literate. 4.5 billion people could not use our
standard keyboard driven, text-driven computers even if they had access
to it. But if you had a speech-driven computer, anybody who doesn't have
a speech disability, is going to be able to use that computer to store
and retrieve information. That's a tremendous potential opportunity: we
are opening up the world storehouse of knowledge to anybody who can
speak.
Question 3
Your claims might be said to be paradoxical, because one could claim
that there is more writing happening than ever before-more e-mail
messages, books, magazines, etc.? Isn't this a rise in written language,
rather than the decline that you say is happening in the shortest time?
Answer
One of the arguments that is used against my viewpoint is that reading
is escalating in the population: even people who didn't write letters
are now writing e-mail messages. There are more books being published,
there are more magazines and journals and newspapers, and more people
are learning how to read around the world, more literacy campaigns in
developing nations. Print literacy is on the rise, how can I possibly
say that literacy is dying in the electronically developed countries?
Well, yes, there is a little blip that appears to be a bit of a rise,
due to e-mail and of course the glut of publishing and so on that is
going on. But we really have to look at the big picture. We have to look
at the fact that the U.S. department of education did a study from 1973
to 1993 on reading and writing abilities of a huge selection of third
graders, seventh graders, and tenth graders in U.S. schools. This was at
a time when there were more schools with highly educated teachers, where
we were teaching reading and writing better. But year after year during
those twenty years from 1973 to 1993 the literacy rate in the U.S. went
down. And it is not just in the U.S., but it's happening in the other
print-literate countries as well, in Europe, in Japan and so on. Why is
this happening? The reasons that people have given are, the schools are
bad, the students are lazy, there is too much TV. I say no. I do not
think students are lazy: they are desperate to learn; they may not want
to learn what their teacher wants to teach them, but they are desperate
to learn. It's a deeper problem, a problem that's harder to see, and I
think it has to do with the evolution of technology and I think it has
to do with the evolution of human beings. For the last one hundred and
twenty five years, the electronically developed print-literate countries
have been raging a furious attack on written language. They are
replacing the essential of function of written language with
speech-driven devices. Written language is not just written language.
Written language is a technology whose essential function is to store
information by writing it down and retrieve that information by reading
it. We freeze information on paper, or in text on a computer screen, or
on rock, and then we fold it out when we want to by reading it. That's
the essential function of written language. For the last hundred and
twenty five years, ever since Edison invented the wax cylinder phonogram
- not even an electric or electronic device - we have had a stream of
electronic and electric and non-electric devices that have been usurping
the function of written language, by replacing it with speech-driven
and/or visual devices. For example, the phonogram, the telegraph, the
radio, TV and video, the computer, and film, photography. All of these
functions of the magazine, the newspaper, the letter, the book, are
being replaced, one by one, by non-print technology. Why is this
happening at this point of history? Why in the last half of the
nineteenth century did society in the print literate electronic
developed countries feel the need to do this? I don't think that it was
by chance. I think there was something about human evolution that had
reached a point where humans felt that written language had reached its
limits as a technology that could efficiently and effectively and
universally store and retrieve information, and we started to move
beyond that by creating all these technological devices that are
speech-driven, and in terms of evolutionary biology, evolutionary
psychology, even evolutionary medicine. I think that it was because as a
language speaking beings - which is part of our essence as human beings
- we are hardwired to speak a language, it is inborn in us, not to speak
any particular language, but to speak. Even children who have speech
disabilities start creating their own sign language. Our basic speech
need is part of our humanity. I think that in the print literate
countries, we have got too far away from our basic orality. There are
deficiencies that we get from not walking, calcium builds up on our feet.
There is also speech deficiency, which I think is predominant in print
literate societies. In evolutionary terms, one of the things beside a
more efficient and universal technology available to us in the form of
talking computers is the fact that the human race feels the need to move
beyond the limits of written language so that we can return to an xoral
culture. The print literate culture is not a natural culture; young kids
just start speaking, but they don't just start writing. We have to train
children to read and write.
Question 4
You say we are going to lose all written notational systems-including
written numerals. Why? How would this affect scientific research?
Answer
Yes, I have been told that my view that all written notational systems
are going to disappear, including written numerals, is going to have a
profound effect on the sciences and so on. How are they going to move
forward, how are we going to keep our scientific method. Well, first of
all, when I say that we are going to lose written notational systems, we
are not going to lose information: it's going to be stored in computers,
and we are going to be able to access it, it's just that we are not
going to be able to store it in the form of written alphabets,
pictographs, numerals, music notation notes, or all the other notational
systems. Now, there will be an adjustment will be required for the
replacement of all of these notational systems, including written
numerals, but we'll manage. One major adjustment we will make will be to
use spoken numbers, or some other visual aids that are more efficient
than our current numeral system. We think Roman numerals are, unreal,
but our Arabic numerals are also very unreal, and one can easily think
of a substitute system. In fact, I devised one or two called LORNS which
are location relative numeral substitute systems, where instead of
having numerals written out we would have matrices with dots in
strategic places, which would stand for numbers, and those would be
visual aids. As far as theoretical math is concerned, I have to admit, I
don't know the answer, I think that is going to be a longer process, but
I think that there will be a process of replacing written numerals.
Question 5
Don't you think that the decline of written language would bring us to a
loss of historical memory?
Answer
I actually think that it will help our historical memory. Most of the
cultures in our world today are still oral cultures - we don't have to
look at ancient history to see oral cultures. Historical memory,
involves passing information to the next generation - or to the next
town or village or to the next continent - in one of two ways: either
you speak to someone and they store it in their memory; or you create
picture objects which represent an event, a cave wall painting, and so
on. After the agricultural revolution we needed another form that could
hold more memory, because the human memory is notoriously weak in terms
of holding a lot of information in it and picture objects got washed
away by the elements. Print seemed to be better, but now we are finding
that print has its limits: when 80% of the world's population cannot use
it, there is a problem. When you look at the huge resources it takes to
train a fluent reader and writer, there is a problem. So, we are
creating talking computers, VIVOs, which will be able to store and
retrieve huge amounts of information which we will store by speaking and
by listening. Very little will get lost, and in fact historical memory
will be enhanced by the fact that everyone will be able to use their
native language to access the information in talking computers. We won't
have to learn another language, because no matter what language
information is stored in, it can be retrieved in your own language
because talking computers raise the actuality of instantaneous
translation of languages. Within ten years there will be no need to
study foreign languages; it will be a hobby, but you'll have your little
talking computer, and I'll have my little talking computer, and you'll
talk to me in Swahili, and I'll talk to you in Spanish, and you'll hear
it in your language, and I'll hear it in my language. Schools will no
longer teach foreign languages, nobody will be compelled to learn a
foreign language to retrieve that whole body of historical memory and to
communicate with anyone on the face of the earth, or in space.
Question 6
How will this change to an oral culture affect other areas, like the
arts and politics?
Answer
The introduction of talking computers will be the last nail in the
coffin of written language. This is going to affect every human activity,
especially throughout the 21st century. Human society is going to be
grappling with the changes and adjustments brought about by the end of
written language. Even oral cultures will change because they are
influenced so much by the print-literate nations. For example, imagine
music without music notations, imagine literature, poetry, plays and so
on without written language. In an oral culture, we are moving into a
reorientation of the arts. Instead of written music, we are going to
have what is the case of most of the world's music, which is improvised
music, and we are going to have a different mode of teaching music, the
apprenticeship mode. In literature, we are moving away from novels, from
written poetry, plays, screenplays, towards storytelling, spoken poetry.
It's happening already; poetry readings are gaining huge audiences here
in the United States, rap, African-American spoken poetry, has swept not
only through the black communities but has a great following in all
communities of youth here in this country and around the world. So, we
are already in the age of spoken poetry. I am a published poet, I am a
college professor who started several college literary magazines; I
loved the written word, but, let's face it, we are in this situation in
which we either go with the motion of history, or we try to fight it,
and we are not going to be able to fight this one. Written language is a
lost cause. Politics, especially international politics, the relation
between the dominant and the oppressed nations, is going to be greatly
altered by the fact that one of the main cultural tools of cultural and
colonial domination, which is insisting that the standard written
language of the colonial power is the only language in which education
happens in the colonised countries or societies, is going to disappear.
Written language as a tool of colonial domination will disappear, and
therefore it will be one slight weakening of the hold that the oppressor
nations have over the oppressed nations. We are looking at a situation
where every people's and every society's own language will have the
opportunity to flourish, and it won't matter whether it ever got
translated into a script, people's own languages will be honoured and
they will be able to use their native language to access all information
on talking computers. This might seem like a minor point, but remember
that in the periods of slavery in the United States Africans brought to
these shores were forbidden from speaking their African languages, were
made to speak in English so that the slave owners could hear what they
were saying, out of the fear that the slaves were conspiring to rebel
and revolt. There was also a law that said it was illegal to teach
Africans reading and writing. Literacy, ever since its formation, has
always been the tool of the strong, of the haves, to dominate the have
nots, and it is still that way today. So the disappearance of written
languages will allow us to level of this playing field.
Question 7
But don't you think that the opposition of the haves vs the have nots
will be reproposed by this computer-based recreation of an oral culture?
It can be claimed, in fact, that not everybody will be able to afford
the expense itself of the hardware, when they are incapable of, say,
feeding themselves.
Answer
The power relations with talking computers will remain exactly the same
as it is with text-driven computers of any technology. The problem of
getting access to the computers by people in the developing nations will
still be a struggle; the same powers that own and control the hardware
and software in distribution, and the sharing or the not sharing of that
hardware and software, are still going to control talking computers. I
see this as a key human rights issue of the 21st century, and of this
century as well. Literacy should be a right and not a privilege, but it
has been a privilege not a right granted by those in power. But access
to a real storehouse of information is a human right. If you deny that,
you deny the right to self-determination. And to deny people literacy,
or in the age of talking computers to deny them access to talking
computers, is denying them their human rights, and there will be a human
rights struggle. But let me just say that I think that the ruling
classes of countries like the United States and Japan are divided on
this issue. Part of the ruling class says: of course we are not just
going to distribute talking computers or any kinds of our computers to
the poor peoples of the world. Let them buy it, that's why we are in
business. But another sector of the ruling class says, no , let's get
the hardware and software to them, because that's how you are going to
be opening up the markets in developing countries around the world.
People are going to be able to get on the Internet, and they are going
to be able to buy a product, and we want every person in Africa, Asia,
and Latin America to have a VIVO computer on their table so that they
can buy everything that we are selling, by ordering it over the
Internet. Just as, for example, the phone companies are giving away free
cellular phones as long as you pay for their service on a monthly basis.
That's how they make their money, they want you to pay for the service
for ten years. So, there is a sector of the ruling class who wants to
give away talking computers for the same reason, to open up markets and
to make a profit.
Question 8
Don't you think that computers and the Internet have, as a matter of
fact, impoverished not only literacy but also and in particular
communication among people? How do you see this process, and how would
your VIVO suggested system affect this?
Answer
First, I think that literacy has always been impoverished. If you look
at the fact that literacy has been devised and in place in some places
for some six to ten thousand years, and you look at the fact that ten
thousands years later, four and a half billion people around the world,
and a hundred and twenty million people at least in the United States,
are functionally non-literate, this is an impoverished technology. That
is one of the reasons, its lack of universality and the huge amount of
resources it takes to school fluent readers and writers that most
countries cannot afford. People who are writing e-mail messages are at
least writing something. A lot of people who are writing e-mail messages,
with all its misspellings and bad grammar, ten years ago they didn't
write anything, they would make a telephone call, because we are more
comfortable with speech, and with speech driven devices. In ten years,
nobody is going to be sending e-mail messages, we are going to be doing
that by speaking, listening and by looking at visual graphic displays on
our VIVO computers, so this is a very short term blip that's happening
right now. Your great- or great-great-grandchildren are not going to
know how to read or write, and it won't matter. The schools will have no
compelling reason to teach reading and writing, nobody will know how to
read or write, and we won't need to, it will be an old technology. Does
it matter that we don't know how to read a sundial? No, not at all, we
have watches. A lot of young people don't know how to read a round faced
watch. That dial with numbers doesn't make any sense to them because
they have been brought up on digital watches, where the time is laid out
as four-digits. That's what time means to them. Does it matter? No, I
don't think so, because those are antiques now, and they are on their
way out. We are moving into a new world, and if you love reading and
writing, or your great-great-grandchildren love it, and they want to
continue to read and write, it will be their hobby. A hobby is some
activity that is not essential to society, to communication, storing and
retrieving information. I said the schools will not be teaching literacy.
Students who are interested in reading and writing will be able to join
the literacy club, where they have fun learning the old reading and
writing styles. But they won't have to and it won't matter, because we
will have moved far beyond that into the realities of the new world
culture.
Question 9
Why do you think the computer industry will invest money to research and
develop VIVOs when they have been investing loads of money building
text-driven computers? May that be a major hindrance to the development
of VIVOs?
Answer
The university computer think tanks, the corporations that are doing
research development on computers are putting a huge amount of their
resources into the development of talking computers, voice recognition,
voice synthesis, voice understanding. They are developing faces, with
lips that move in synch to the words that the computer says, so that the
user will have a friendly face to speak with. They are developing
computers with a seeing eye, that will pick up the user's face, and
focus and interpret our facial expressions and maybe even our bodily
language, so that it can better understand what we are saying, whether
we making a joke or whether is figurative or is it literal. A huge
amount of resources, and that amount is going to increase exponentially
as hardware and software companies really understand that with the
talking computer their market will be every person on the face of the
earth who can speak and hear. A lot is being developed to help people
with disabilities, people who can't write or read but who can speak and
listen. But they are even developing computers now that are talking
computers but that will recognise sign language, then you will be able
to sign to the computer and it will sign back to you. Computer companies
feel that there's a huge market out there, of people, first of all, the
80% of the world's people who would be able to use a talking computer
and are not able to use a keyboard-driven, text-driven computer. But all
of us in the electronically developed countries, in the print-literate
countries, prefer to pick up the telephone rather than write a letter,
because speech is easier for us. Wouldn't we like to have a computer
that we can just talk to instead of worrying about typing in written
language, and worrying about grammar rules, and worrying about if
someone on the other end is going to be able to read it? One of the
things I teach besides philosophy is reading and writing. I decided to
teach that because I really wanted to understand why students in the US
are resistant to learn reading and writing. I started to understand some
important things about it. In ten years, I will give the students a
written assignment, and say: go and write three pages on the death
penalty, pro or con. They go home, but on their desk at home is a VIVO
talking computer/ They speak their "essay" into the computer,
it doesn't have to be spoken grammatically correctly, the computer will
have grammar check, it will straighten out those lines of speech and the
student will proof read the "essay", by listening to the
computer speak it back, make any changes that they want, and produce a
diskette to give me, or put it on-line for me. Now, but wait, I had said
I wanted a written copy, so the student punches a button, and the
computer automatically prints out a printed copy, and then the student
gives it out to me. The student has written a perfectly written essay,
it has been through grammar check and spell check, but I don't know if
that student can write one English sentence, and neither does that
student. So the question is, when everybody on earth can, by using a
VIVO computer, write a perfectly written essay, what does it mean? Some
people think that we are going to have a Renaissance of print, because
now everybody will be able to write perfect essays. No, what it means is
that written language is a redundant and obsolete technology. If the
student can access, retrieve and store information by speaking, typing
it out is unnecessary. As a teacher I can just speak with the student,
on the basis of speaking and listening, and that becomes our new medium,
our memory becomes the talking computer.
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