Can you type without a keyboard?
Yes. The post you are reading was not typed on a keyboard, it was said to a speech to text software, i.e. unwinding on the fly. A technology that, as it develops, will truly change our behavior and some habits that have been consolidated for centuries. As anyone who carries out a creative or broadly creative activity knows, a cue, an inspiration, an idea can come at any time of the day or in any situation, even the inopportune one.
Particularly propitious are the moments in which one takes a walk and the mind, gradually oxygenating itself, begins to release creative material. When these moments come, however, we are not always able to fix them in the right way. Sometimes there isn't the tool to do it and the lighting itself tends to go out in an instant with the thought already running elsewhere.
What can be done to not miss the fleeting moment? The most effective thing is to take out the phone, or touch the watch screen, launch an app, say the flying thought aloud and store the resulting file, which can be voice or text, in the cloud.
There are two ways to do this. The first is to record an audio file and then deliver it to an application that will take care of unwinding it into editable text with any word processor. The second, however, consists in immediately activating a speech-to-text application which translates the voice into characters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Both methods are equally valid. Personally I prefer the second one, for the immediate possibility of editing the file it produces. I want to have the possibility to correct and expand it immediately with the tools I usually use to write.
It only takes 10 euros
To do this, you don't need an application developed by MIT labs or IBM's Watson. There is already something ready-made or that can be downloaded from the AppStore at a cost of less than 10 euros.
For the English language there is already delirium, for the Italian they are working on it, even if something is already there. For example, I use one of the more trivial applications that comes pre-installed on all iPhones, Notes. Notes has a text dictation option that works great with short-form material. You can also dictate a text to Siri and then ask it to transfer it to Notes. This tool is used to fix a concept, write a paragraph, jot down an annotation. Note cannot be told to transcribe an entire novel.
In that case, you have to resort to something more sophisticated. Perhaps it's best to record speech and then give it to an unspooling app that specializes in this task. There is for example Descript (for now only for English) which also offers audio editing function to clean up the sound track to be transcribed. Let's hope it arrives soon also for Italian.
For our language there are various solutions that more or less use the same transcription engine. This article describes several for both iOS that for Android. The advantage of Notes is that it doesn't need a connection to work.
I thought I was one of the few who experimented with this slightly bizarre but very effective way of producing texts in any situation I found myself, as long as I carve out a moment of privacy in which to speak to the instrument. Then in the "New York Times" I came across an editorial by Farhad Manjoo, the media columnist of the New York newspaper, entitled "I Didn't Write This Column. I Spoke It.” I must also say that reading Manjoo's piece led me to reflect on the fact that this way of writing by speaking also changes the style and quality of writing for the better. For the better. In fact it is more fluid, conversational, spontaneous and effective. Yet another proof of the fact that technology also changes content.
So I thought I'd let Farhad Manjoo tell you about his experience and considerations directly. His enthusiasm for what could happen to us with a voice Internet is in stark contrast to his latest mood in terms of new technologies. A mood that truly has apocalyptic tones
Enjoy the reading!
(NB: if there is any error it is the fault of the transcription software)
Writing, speaking also changes the style
A few months ago, I started a new way of writing. I don't mean so much a new literary style. I mean a new method of fixing the hieroglyphics that form in my mind into clear and coherent words and sentences.
Here's what I do: instead of writing, I talk. An interesting thought strikes me — while I'm in the office, do I wash the dishes or drive? Or, as has happened so often recently, does it come to me when I take long aimless walks on the desolate suburban sidewalks of Silicon Valley? Well, I open RecUp, a cloud connected voice recording app on my iPhone. Being pretty much always on a wireless headset and mic — yes, I'm one of those “AirPodders” — the app records my voice in high fidelity, while my phone lies in my pocket out of sight.
And so, on foot, wandering around the city, I write. I started making voice memos to remember ideas to use in my articles and dictated short sentences. But as I got comfortable with this practice, I started composing complex sentences, paragraphs, and even whole articles, just by speaking.
Now comes the magical part. I upload these recordings to Descript, an app that bills itself as an “audio word processor”. Some of my voice memos are over an hour long, but Descript quickly (and cheaply) transcribes text, truncates silences and pauses, and makes my speech editable and searchable.
Through the software, my sketchy memos are transformed into a writing skeleton. The text Descript produces is certainly not ready for publication, but it works like a pencil sketch: a rough first draft that I then polish the old-fashioned way, on a screen, with a keyboard and a lot of blood and tears.
Writing like a street photographer stops reality
Writing, speaking, has quietly revolutionized the way I work. It made my writing more conversational and less researchy. Even more surprisingly, it has broadened my color palette: I can now write with the same ease and immediacy with which photographers stare down the street at an image that strikes them in the moment. Most of my recent articles, including large parts of this one, have been written like this: first with my mouth, then with my fingers.
There is something more interesting in this than a reporter's report. I began writing this way as part of a deeper exploration of life within what I call the "screenless internet." The screenless internet could become the internet of tomorrow, for better or for worse.
At the end of the last decade, smartphones freed our desks from computers, which was, at first, thrilling until we realized that they were slipping into a careless and superficial existence filtered through a glass. Now, as we reach the heights of videocracy, we begin to see the outlines of a different path, a path without a screen.
End of videocracy?
New developments in technology portend a profound change in the use of electronic devices. Smarter, more ubiquitous voice assistants are already here. There is a new generation of text-to speech programs. There are easy-to-use audio and video production apps like Descript and Anchor. There are gadgets that bring the internet to your ears, like Apple's AirPods and future Amazon AirPod clones. It may soon be possible to conduct a large part of your digital life, including work, without being glued to a screen. How will it be? Will it be better than what we have today? Or will it be worse?
To begin answering these questions, I tried to do without the screen. Two or three mornings a week, I put on headphones and a pair of comfy walking boots (Docs and Timbs are my favorite), then hit the road to walk. My aim is also to understand what I can do with my mouth and ears. I also want to get an idea of how interacting with computers, especially talking and listening, can change the computer world and ourselves.
Now, I have no problem admitting that my experiment is unusual and somewhat bizarre. However, I was surprised how much can be done without a screen. As a columnist, I spend a large part of my day researching and analyzing information. I read the news, read magazines and books, and try to find sources and experts to talk about what I find interesting.
Off-screen content is even better
In my office, I'd do all of this on one screen. But now I can find all the news and expertise in the screenless internet. In fact, in some ways, screenless content is better. Podcasts and audiobooks offer the kind of experience that reminds me of the amateur blogosphere of 2003. That is, a serious, serious discussion about the news and things in life. A discussion that is perceived as more intimate, less click-catching, less partisan and more authentic than today's visual web.
And it's also more efficient. By listening at double speed, I can browse news and audiobooks in less time and without unnecessary distractions. When information reaches my ears, I feel less eager to frantically search for something new, encouraged towards in the visual internet.
There are readers who will say that this experiment is silly and childish, that the power of screens is such that it is folly to imagine a world without them. Others might suggest that the screenless internet, if it comes, will bring its own specific horrors: dead-eyed AirPodders talking loudly to robotic assistants as they zombie-move through Times Square (as they do in Jordan Peele's "US"). .
I am aware of those dangers (and more yet to be imagined). Yet the more I write speaking, the more I fall madly in love with a future without a screen. What matters to me is how even my improvised method can magically reduce the distance between my thoughts and the computer.
As this distance collapses further — as computers begin to understand our speech and therefore our thoughts with increasingly high fidelity — the Internet will cease to be embalmed in glass. Everything around us will become alive and it could be magnificent.
Or not?
