The power of voice
CHEAP STORAGE MAKES it feasible to save voice recordings of
many of our meetings, teleconferences, interviews, and other
conversations. In some environments -- call centers and certain
sectors of finance and government -- that already happens. But
audio surveillance isn't yet routine, and the thorny legal, social,
and cultural issues it raises haven't yet been widely debated.
That's because, until now, there was no practical way to mine voice
data. As with other forms of practical obscurity, this artificial
barrier was bound to topple, and now it has. Fast-Talk
Communications' revolutionary phonetic indexing and search
technology brings the magic of full-text search to the formerly
opaque realms of audio recordings and video soundtracks. If you
consider the way in which Google has already become everyone's
indispensable "outboard brain," and extrapolate that to all the
voice data that exists -- and to the vast quantities that soon will
exist -- it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Fast-Talk is one of
the most disruptive technologies in the pipeline. [Full story at
InfoWorld.com.]
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/12/16.html#a544