From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak
Update: 2025-05-19
Description
Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing.
In this conversation, we explore:
- the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey
- 2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers
- the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks
- Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.”
- why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri
- the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital
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