Home Computer Talk

So, the Max Headroom style of talking computer isn’t really something that is available for now. The text version of AI (Artificial Intelligence) doesn’t really fill the slot either. What we want is for our personal Computer to talk to us and hopefully, understand what we mean when we talk to it.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, we met the HAL 9000 computer, one which certainly fit the description of a computer that could talk to, and understand humans.

Text to Voice is one step along the way. There are programs which can take text and read it aloud, with sometimes very funny results – but they are improving. One of the better ones I’ve seen is from Natural Reader and they have a free download version to try. Talking Computer also has a download available.

Text to Speech can be handy for converting documents that need to be read into a sound file that can be listened to as you do other things. Also, reading long documents onscreen has yet to achieve the comfort levels of the paper versions.

Text to Speech is also a handy tool for the sight impaired – unfortunately, speech to text has a much harder path to tread before it becomes useful for the hearing impaired. The English language is much more understandable when written than when spoken

From ‘English is Tough Stuff’
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;

Try to read that aloud and then have a moment of sympathy for the poor computer which tries to deal with not only that complexity, but also the different tone, pitch, speed, accent and sex of the speaker.

Remember, it takes a human up to four years to learn to speak fluently in their native tongue and much longer before they are expert in it. Some never go beyond the basics.