Voices

I wanted to call this blog voices in the machine. This blog is inspired by a conversation I overheard; my wife was on Zoom, discussing posting videos for her weaving guild. I was wondering whether she would have a transcript of her proposed Zoom meeting, as I find it a lot easier to read than to listen to videos. Sabine Hossenfelder on her BackReaction blog, posts videos and transcripts. Having a transcript makes it a lot easier to go backwards and forwards to make sure points being made are understood. Sabine is a strongly opinionated physicist and a free will skeptic, so she cannot be all bad.

I could not help wondering what technologies and apps are out there, that could do this; and, after a very a preliminary search, it turns out Microsoft Windows 10 has a rudimentary software that can perform transcripts. So here is a test of the ability of myself and the software to write a blog, should I say, to speak a blog.

One of the things I am finding, is that I use the pronoun “I” a lot more often when speaking. I live in a technical world, where all my writing is in a passive voice; for me, being in the first-person singular is a little unusual.

I find that I get lots of ideas when reading stuff and it is difficult and remember ideas when it comes to writing a blog; so, this may be a useful tool in the end. Is it faster than typing? For me yes. I think with practice this tool could become quite useful. It does require a little bit of preparation, a little bit of thought and clear steady voice. When I start talking I quite often I cannot ‘see’ the end of the sentence; this is similar when I am writing. The advantage of writing is, I get a chance to think about the ending of my sentence; whereas, when I was talking, I get stuck. But with practice, there is a chance that we could end up with a more polished product at least with a little bit of practice.

The voice recognition transcription program is surprisingly good, and it makes a few errors. I find, I make most of the errors. One does start to wonder about what is consciousness when it comes to the machine? You can see the machine thinking, occasionally getting it wrong and sometimes correcting itself. It is almost as though the machine hears a word and corrects itself when the word does not make sense. This app is quite easy to anthropomorphize.

Another thing, this blog was written in a word document. This allows me to check the grammar, spelling, document length and ease of reading, easily. Hope this has been useful to any passing blogger. And if anyone would care to comment on any software they might use; this would be useful.