At 9:41 PM 5/29/96, Gregory Abowd wrote:
>This seminar should be of interest to FCE folks, especially
>those involved in some of the recent Classroom 2000 discussions.
>
>Gregory
>------- Forwarded Message
>
>Subject: DSP Colloquium
>Sender: owner-gvu-fac@cc.gatech.edu
>Precedence: bulk
>
>This weeks colloquium is a special discussion regarding the future of
>speech recognition and synthesis. Note the different time and place.
>
>
>- ----------------------- DSP Colloquium -------------------------
>
> CompSpeak 2050: How Talking Computers Will Recreate an Oral
> Culture by the Mid--21st Century
>
> By Professor William Crossman
>
> Friday, May 31st
> Room 102 MiRC
> 10:00 am
>
>
>
> mail: colloquium@eedsp.gatech.edu
>
> web: http://www.ee.gatech.edu/seminar/dsp
>
>- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Abstract
>
>In the 21st Century, VIVOs (voice-in/voice-out computers using visual
>displays but no text) will make written language obsolete. Written
>language is essentially a technology for storing and retrieving
>information; VIVOs will perform this same function more easily and
>efficiently without requiring people to learn to read and write.
>There will be no compelling reason for schools to teach literacy
>skills. By 2050, the electronically-developed nations will become
>oral cultures; by 2150, a worldwide oral culture will be in place.
>Today's push to develop VIVOs is a further step in the human
>evolutionary drive to move past written language's limits and return
>to the biogenetic, oral-aural, pre-alphabetic roots of human
>communication and information storage. Young people's choosing TV,
>telephone, stereo, and computer games over books, letter-writing,
>etc.--and the corresponding decline in reading-writing scores over the
>last 20 years--is not the result of mental laziness or poor schools
>but is an irreversible symptom of this deeper evolutionary process.
>VIVOs will transform every area of human activity in the 21st Century,
>including education, the arts, human relations, politics, and
>business. Billions of nonliterate people, using VIVOs, will finally
>be able to access the world's stored information--if they can gain
>access to VIVOs. Access to VIVO technology looms as a key human
>rights issue of the 21st Century.
>
>------- End of Forwarded Message
--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html