Let’s hear it for voice-operated IT (1999)

Even though Toyota will this year add Amazon’s Alexa to its cars, it’s worth recalling how long it has taken us to reach that

British Leyland used to make Metros that talked. As so often with voice synthesis, the chip’s accent was a riot. Since then the world’s telecommunications companies have been telling us that the future is in value-added data, and not in humble voice traffic. But let’s hear it for the voice, for a change.

Some might argue that our fondness for a visual world of screens rather than the audio channel is no problem. What’s certain is that we can make meaning out of the spoken and heard word faster than we can from reading. The timbre, pitch and intensity of a voice beat many an e-mail. There is a rich armoury to play with: dynamics, intonation, resonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia.

Given the power and humanity of the voice, its prospects with IT ought to be excellent. We might not like all the sounds that are now emitted by computers (don’t think icons, think earcons). There’s also no guarantee that music put over digital channels is going to be any better than music put over in old-fashioned ways. But we might expect Britain’s IT community to pay homage to the voice, if only because voices are so laden with Content.

Fat chance. British voice mail is in the dark ages. Every day, the disembodied voice of a BT answering-machine person insults my intelligence. She tells me the time of day, as if I hadn’t noticed; that this is an ad for BT, as if I didn’t already feel sick about just that; that the person I’m calling is unable to take my call at present – I’m astounded, and that she is in a position to take a message for me – I’m even more astounded.

Then there is a jump in the tape, and she – or is it another somebody else? – comes on again to tell me what to do after the tone comes, since I clearly have no idea.

The whole branded deliverable lasts only a few seconds; in other words, an eternity. And it comes from a firm that liked to say ‘work smarter, not harder’.

Ericsson and my old employer, Philips, make mobile phones that understand voices. IBM and others make programs to drive PCs with the voice; not perfect, but getting better. Microsoft has realised that, with in-car navigation systems, voices make more sense than map reading. General Motors wants to build cars that are equipped with satellite-based ‘cable TV for the ears’. GM also wants cars developing a fault to be able to contact a call centre automatically, so that an operator there can call the driver back and say what to do. But in Britain, we like to manage the audio channel the London Underground way.

Dopey voices, again with jumps in the tape, now adorn the District line. At crowded station escalators, lengthy apologies are repeated to torture people even more.

In telephones and transport, it seems, the nation that gave the world the BBC radio announcer can no longer find its voice.