Vox ex Machina
A Cultural History of Talking Machines
$79.98
- Paperback
256 pages
- Release Date
22 October 2024
Summary
How today’s digital devices got their voices, and how we learned to listen to them.
From early robots to toys like the iconic Speak & Spell to Apple’s Siri, Vox Ex Machina tells the fascinating story of how scientists and engineers developed voices for machines during the twentieth century. Sarah Bell chronicles the development of voice synthesis from buzzy electrical current and circuitry in analog components to the robotic sounds of early digital signal processing to to…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262546355 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262546353 |
| Author: | Sarah A. Bell |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 256 |
| Release Date: | 22 October 2024 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 152mm |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
Included in the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024
“Vox ex Machina is a terrific tour of the technologies behind an artificially intelligent synthetic human voice.”
—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
“Vox ex Machina showcases both the products of voice synthesis and the underlying technologies that made them possible. It’s a fascinating tour, particularly when Bell focuses on the ways in which the public’s reaction to these ‘talking machines’ presaged its reaction to the ‘thinking’ ones that would emerge decades later.”
—MIT Technology Review
“This is a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable book for anyone interested in history of human-electronic machine interaction, electronic sound, communication, the history of technology, popular media, and the social implications and impact of contemporary personal electronics and digital assistants.”
—H-Net Reviews
About The Author
Sarah A. Bell
Sarah A. Bell is a writer and professor who studies the impacts of information technologies on society. She earned a PhD in Communication from the University of Utah in 2015.
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