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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