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I understand that his voice was his identity but our voices naturally and distinctly change as we mature and age. I am left to wonder why it was so important th
by blorenz 8y ago
I understand that his voice was his identity but our voices naturally and distinctly change as we mature and age. I am left to wonder why it was so important that his voice remain frozen in time?
Also, though it borders on surveillance, this text-to-speech technology offered the byproduct to record every spoken word that Professor Hawking said in lecture and made available as searchable text. He had authored every conversation he had. Does such a repository exist in his estate?
- larkeith 8y agoI would imagine part of it is that our voices change gradually. Even in extreme cases, like when we go hoarse or get sick, there's an essential progression to link our new voice to the old, and there's an identifiable common thread. Meanwhile, for Hawking, it would have been a sudden, disjoint change - and with the exception of the mentioned upgraded CallText voice, any replacement would have been completely new, utterly unrelated to his prior voice; Imagine how disconcerting it would be to awake with a stranger's voice, with no expectation of getting your own back.
- mwcampbell 8y agoExactly. And whereas biological human voices deteriorate with time, the proposed replacements for Hawking's voice were supposedly improvements (though not necessarily improvements to him).
- PakG1 8y agoThis really hit me when I watched The Force Awakens. I was so weirded out when I realized I was expecting Han and Leia to sound the exact same as they did in Return of the Jedi. The difference in their voices is really stark. I was much better prepared for hearing Luke's voice in The Last Jedi after that. I knew they had gotten older, I knew their voices were different, but it never hit me until I saw them playing Han and Leia again.