Now You're Talking: Human Conversation from the Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence

by Trevor Cox

Overview

A history of how humans developed our capacity for conversation—and what might happen now that computers are catching up.

Trevor Cox has been described by The Observer as ""a David Attenborough of the acoustic realm."" In Now You're Talking, he takes us on a journey through the wonders of human speech, starting with the evolution of language and our biological capability to speak (and listen), and bringing us up to date with the latest computer technology.

Language is what makes us human, and how we speak is integral to our personal identity. But with the invention of sound recording and the arrival of the electrified voice, human communication changed forever; now advances in computer science and artificial intelligence are promising an even greater transformation. And with it come the possibilities to reproduce, manipulate, and replicate the human voice—sometimes with disturbing consequences.

Now You're Talking is the fascinating story of our ability to converse. It takes us back to the core of our humanity, asking important questions about what makes us human and how this uniqueness might be threatened. On this illuminating tour we meet vocal coaches and record producers, neuroscientists and computer programmers, whose experience and research provide us with a deeper understanding of something that most of us take for granted—our ability to talk and listen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640090804
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Trevor Cox is a professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford, U.K., and a former president of the Institute of Acoustics. He has presented twenty–four science documentaries on BBC Radio and written feature articles for New Scientist, Sound on Sound, and The Guardian. He is the author of The Sound Book, winner of an Acoustical Society of America writing award. He was awarded the Institute of Acoustics’ Tyndall Medal and the Institute of Acoustics’ Award for Promoting Acoustics to the Public. He currently holds the Guinness World Record for producing the longest echo in one of the Inchindown Oil Tanks.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Evolution 11

2 The Three Ages of the Voice 43

3 My Voice is Me 77

4 Vocal Charisma 105

5 Electrifying the Voice 131

6 All the Robots Merely Players 166

7 Beware, the Computers have Ears 197

8 Computer Love Letters 226

Acknowledgements 257

Lyric credits 258

Picture credits 259

Notes 261

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

07/30/2018
British acoustic engineer Cox (The Sound Book) channels his enthusiasm about the wonders of sound and the possibilities of artificial intelligence into a slow-building essay collection. “Being able to speak is what makes us human,” Cox writes, before excitedly moving through a miscellany of topics related to the evolutionary development of hearing, innovations in amplifying and recording technology, and evolutionary and cultural responses to accents and other distinguishing features of human speech. The chapter “My Voice Is Me” looks at social factors behind speech characteristics, such as the registers women speak in and speech patterns related to sexual identity. Cox is at his best when discussing where speech and technology overlap, as with his examination of how talking robots capture incidental data from tone-of-voice commands in order to more effectively mimic human speech. The final chapter, one of the book’s finest, deals with computer programs that can construct and recite love poems. Cox proves an affable guide, and his sharp history will give casual science buffs a lot to talk about. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Now You're Talking

"The spectrum of sounds humans emit are not only the lifeblood of conversation—they are central to our sense of who we are and where we come from. In his book Now You're Talking, acoustic engineer and BBC radio presenter Trevor Cox zooms in on the basic mechanics of our vocal abilities, broadly surveys the ways our speaking voices define and reflect identity, and asks what it means when this most human quality can be replicated by computers." —Psychology Today

"A lively, intelligent and persuasive history of speech." —Laura Freeman, The Times

"Illuminating . . . Cox knows how to make his subject sing.” —Sebastian Shakespeare, Daily Mail

"A lucid look at the science behind human communication . . . The greatest takeaway from the book is the welcome thought that our best moments as human communicators are in ordinary conversations, 'quotidian activity that allows knowledge about how to survive and thrive to be passed between us.' There's lots to ponder in Cox's geekily entertaining exploration of how we acquire our voices and understand those of others." —Kirkus Reviews

"Cox proves an affable guide, and his sharp history will give casual science buffs a lot to talk about." —Publishers Weekly

"Cox carefully examines the physiology of the vocal apparatus and details the latest evolutionary theories of early hominid speech . . . A book giving readers much to talk about." —Booklist

Praise for The Sound Book

"This small encyclopedia of strange sounds reveals how much art there is in the act of listening. Reading it made my ears more mindful." —Adam Gopnik

“Anyone who has ever clapped, hollered, or yodeled at an echo will delight in [Cox’s] zestful curiosity.” —The New York Times

"Turns up the volume on...sonic oddities." —NPR

"From its first page to its last, The Sound Book invites readers to close their eyes and open their ears to the sounds, both normal and peculiar, that surround us all." —Science News

"[A] mission to make sound tourism the next big thing." —Gemma Tarlach, Discover

"Charming... From its first page to its last, The Sound Book invites readers to close their eyes and open their ears to the sounds, both normal and peculiar, that surround us all." —Sid Perkins, Science News Magazine

"Cox reminds us not only of the sonic marvels we often miss, but also how those sounds affect us." —Publishers Weekly

"An intriguing tour d'horizon of the world of sound." —Kirkus Reviews

"A technological travelogue conducted by an expert tour guide, bursting with aural arcana that adds just the right amount of tech–savvy detail, The Sound Book brings into relief a world often obscured in our image–heavy existence. Even as we follow Cox to the ends of the Earth, what makes his book a real rush is that it's ultimately an ear–buzzing journey to the center of our minds." —Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever

"A riveting ear–opener, Trevor Cox describes in lyrical detail a range of sonic events and new ways of listening that can only brighten our experience of the acoustic world around us. A must–read for sound–lovers of all stripes." —Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places

From the Publisher

2018-07-16
A lucid look at the science behind human communication.Consider a smartly constructed computer that read every book in the world. Even if it did, writes Cox (Acoustic Engineering/Univ. of Salford; The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World, 2014), "its knowledge would be incomplete," for the computer would lack a world of cultural context. It would probably not be able to understand most allusions, would certainly not be able to fill in the blanks of the things that human storytellers leave out of their tales, might not parse plays on words, and so forth. That we human speakers and listeners are able to do all these things points to the phenomenal amount of brainpower that underlies communication. The author examines the evolution of the human vocal tract, noting that standing upright lengthened it to produce a great variety of sounds—and adding that there are distinct differences in the pronunciation of short and tall people in pronouncing words such as bit/bet because of vocal tract length, differences that we adjust for without knowing that we're doing so: "the listener subconsciously estimates how long the vocal tract of the speaker is." Just so, speech impediments such as hesitation or stuttering speak to a huge amount of neural processing and misprocessing as well as the implication of genetics, such as the mutation of "FOXP2 on chromosome 7," in making pronunciation difficult for one unfortunate British family. Neural processing, too, makes it possible for us to judge the "authenticity" of a speaker who is reporting some emotion—an authenticity that is too often faked, whether by a politician or a skilled actor. The greatest takeaway from the book is the welcome thought that our best moments as human communicators are in ordinary conversations, "quotidian activity that allows knowledge about how to survive and thrive to be passed between us."There's lots to ponder in Cox's geekily entertaining exploration of how we acquire our voices and understand those of others.

Kirkus Reviews