One more blog post about voice recognition software. I expect this will be the last one in a while.
Today, I’m going to try something different. This entire blog post I’m going to dictate blind to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. All I’m going to do is talk in a normal tone of voice (well, a little louder and more clearly than I usually talk) and I’m not going to look at the screen and I’m just going to see what happens – what kind of results Dragon NaturallySpeaking will give me, and this will let me gain some insight into how well it would work if I just compose the story off the top of my head, into Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and then went back and tried to proofread it on the screen.
One thing I have noticed (and I think I’ve talked about this before) is that watching the pause that the program takes before it would type out what I say slows me down quite a bit, and whenever I see the program has made an error, it slows me down to correct it: and that influences my speech patterns so that, in advance, I tend to speak more slowly, speak more clearly, and speak in an artificial way – the way that the program is not set up to recognize. On the other hand, when I’ve done a few sentences that the program has accurately recognized, I start to speak faster and in a more normal manner.
So, that’s what I’m trying today. I’m afraid that if I looked at the screen, I would find some mistakes it would make, and I would then speak more clearly and artificially. This is death to any attempt to compose a story off the top of my head. Every time I have to deal with the program interrupts the flow of the story, my concentration on the subject matter of the story, and the whole mood that I get into what I call “story mode.”
Also, I’m sure that when I look at the screen, I’m thinking about the text – that is, the text as it is written, and not the text as it is spoken. Oral storytelling has to deal with the words as sound, the way the mouth moves to form the words, and the way the ear hears the words – in other words, poetry. Whenever you write (or at least whenever I write) any fictional tale, my mind gets into a groove – a heightened sense of reality, or at least a different sense of reality, because I’m no longer in the real world where my body is – at least not entirely. Instead a good part of me, and most of my mind, goes into the world of the story.
The world of the story is someplace else and following the story involves following the thread of the story through the events and episodes that the story tells us about. Composing a story is slightly different: instead of merely following this thread, the talesmen is creating the thread. And that involves choosing which path the thread is going to take out of the many paths that the thread could take. Every juncture of the tale involves a choice that the talesmen has to make – he makes this choice so that the audience does not have to. He makes this choice as surrogate for the characters in the tale – not only for any one character but for all the characters combined – or collectively as individuals. The talesmen also has to make these choices for events that do not directly result from the characters actions – things like weather, random influences, coin tosses, lucky events, and so forth.
Dealing with all these different threads and all these different choices involves a tremendous amount of concentration. In fact, I would even say that the effort of this concentration is superhuman – that is to say, it goes beyond what almost any person could do. So how can anybody tell a story?
I think the answer to that springs from dreams, and it also has to do with this different sense of reality that every talesmen enters into as he tells his story. I believe that this sense of reality comes out of the right side of the brain – the side of the brain that recognizes patterns – and it goes back far beyond the birth of the left side of the brain. This pattern recognition is vital to the survival of most any animal, and especially it’s vital to the survival of predators.
This kind of pattern recognition, I think, is connected to areas of genius in the human mind that are, at least so far, inexplicable. But we don’t have to explain them in order to utilize. As storytellers, all we need to do is recognize what that state of mind feels like from the inside, and remember, or at least cultivate the skills involved in getting ourselves into that frame of mind. That’s why any kind of interruption to this state or frame of mind will kill the flow of the story. And if the storyteller can’t maintain that flow, the story that he develops will not flow for his readers, either.
Anyway, that’s why I’m trying this experiment today. I want to see how well I’ve trained this program. I want to see how well I’ve trained myself and how well I speak – at least how well I speak in relationship to the program understanding. I haven’t even been using this program for a week, and I only did two training sessions and pointed it towards a few of my texts, so that it would pick up some of my vocabulary and the way that I write. So this is very early in the process for me – on the other hand, this program is said to be able to work very well with no training whatsoever. So I’m putting it to a real test today.
I have spoken today faster to the program than I have in any of my previous sessions. I don’t think I’m really in a frame of mind where I’d be capable of telling a real story. Part of the reason for this is that I’m still conscious of how I’m speaking – the mechanics of forming the words: phrasing, enunciating, and trying to become a more clear speaker to the microphone and through the microphone to the program. Also, I have never in my life told a story – at least a professional fiction story – off the top of my head in this way. I am no great raconteur. So this whole process of dictating a story is new to me, new to me even if I were just telling somebody, and not trying to dictate to a voice recognition program.
(Composed by dictation September 3, 2008)
The following is the original, uncorrected text as the program transcribed it.
One more blog post about voice recognition software. I expect this will be the last one in a while.
Today, I’m going to try something different. This entire blog post I’m going to dictate blind to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. All I’m going to do is talk in a normal tone of voice (well, a little louder and more clearly than I usually talk) and I’m not going to look at the screen and I’m just going to see what happens – what kind of results Dragon NaturallySpeaking will give me, and this will let me gain some insight into how well would work if I just compose the story off the top of my head, into Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and then went back and tried to proofread it on the screen.
One thing I have noticed (and I think I’ve talked about this before) is that watching the pause that the program takes before it would type out what I say slows me down quite a bit and whenever I see the program has made an error it slows me down to correct it and that influences my speech patterns so that in advance I tend to speak more slowly speak more clearly and speaking in an artificial way – the way that the program is not setup to recognize. On the other hand, when I’m done a few sentences that the program has accurately recognized, I start to speak faster and in a more normal manner.
So, that’s what I’m trying today. I’m afraid that if I looked at the screen I would find some mistakes they would make and I would then and speak more clearly at artificially. This is day off to any attempt to compose a story off the top of my head. Every time I have to deal with the program interrupts the flow of the story, my concentration of the subject matter of the story, and the whole mood that I get into what I mean “story mode.”
Also, I’m sure that when I look at the screen, I’m thinking about the text – that is, the text as it is written and not the text as it is spoken. Oral storytelling has to deal with the words as sound to wave them mouth moves to form the words and the way the ear hears the words – in other words, poetry. Whenever you write (or at least whenever I write) any fictional tale, my mind gets into who grew – a heightened sense of reality, or at least a different sense of reality because I’m no longer in the real world where my body as – at least not entirely. Instead a good part of me, and most of my mind, goes into the world of the story.
The world of the story is someplace else and following the story involves following the thread of the story through the events and episodes that the story tells us about. Composing a story a slightly different: instead of merely following this thread, the talesmen is creating the threat. And that involves choosing which path the thread is going to take out of the many paths that the thread could take. Every juncture of detail involves a choice that the talesmen has to make – he makes this choice so that the audience does not have to. He makes this choice as surrogate for the characters in the tale – not only for any one character but for all the characters combined – or collectively as individuals. The talesmen also has to make these choices for events that do not directly result from the characters actions – things like whether random influences coin tosses lucky events and so forth.
Dealing with all these different threads and all these different choices involves a tremendous amount of concentration. In fact, I would even say that the effort of this concentration is superhuman – that is to say, it goes beyond what almost any person could do. So how can anybody tell a story?
I think the answer to that springs from dreams, and it also has to do with this different sense of reality that every talesmen enters into AC tells his story. I believe that this sense of reality comes out of the right side of the brain – the side of the brain recognizes patterns, and it goes back far beyond in our history the birth of the left side of the party. This pattern recognition is vital to the survival of most any animal, and especially its vital to the survival of predators.
This kind of pattern recognition I think is connected to areas of genius in the human mind that are at least so far inexplicable. But we don’t have to explain them in order to utilize. As storytellers, all we need to do is recognize what bad state of mind feels like from the inside, and remember – or at least cultivate the skills involved in getting ourselves into that frame of mind. That’s why any kind of interruption to this state or frame of mind will kill the flow of the story. And if the storyteller can’t maintain that flow, the story that he develops will not flow for his readers, either.
Anyway, that’s why I’m trying this experiment today. I want to see how well I’ve trained this program. I want to see how well I’ve trained myself and how well he speak – and least how well I speak in relationship to the program understanding. I haven’t even been using this program for a week, and I only did two training sessions and pointed it towards a few of my texts so that it would pick up some of my vocabulary in the way that I write. So this is very early in the process of me – on the other hand this program is said to be able to work very well with no training whatsoever. So I’m putting it to a real test today. New paragraph I have spoken today faster to the program and I have in any of my previous sessions. I don’t think I’m really in a frame of mind or I be capable of telling a real story is. Part of the reason for this is that I’m still conscious of how I’m speaking – the mechanics of forming the words phrasing enunciating and trying to become a more clear speaker to the microphone and through the microphone to the program. Also, I have never in my life told a story – at least a professional fiction story – off the top of my head in this way. I am no great raconteur. So this whole process of dictating a story is new to me, new to me even if I were just telling somebody, and not trying to dictate to a voice recognition program.
