Speech! It is at the heart of what we do and how we experience the world, as humans, and yet it is inherently limited by distance and ephemerality. That is, it was limited until the second half of the 19th century, when the telephone and the phonograph utterly changed that key aspect of human existence. Was this the “real” Singularity? What kinds of technologies might come in the future which could have any such effect on the human condition?
Supplementary Show
2022–05–31 The first part of an Analog article (1971 April) entitled Real Science for Real Problems, by John R Price of Bell Labs, discussing some of the results from psychological research, especially as they apply to the problems of instruction and learning in a large industrial organization. Also I somewhat angrily read a letter addressed to a current–affairs radio news program, provoked by a report entitled Europe reconsiders nuclear energy following Ukraine war, which I felt was very badly slanted ; and I mention two new film transfers, a French commerce–promotion film from circa 1964, and a Soviet school film, probably circa 1980.
