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From: ben@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Benjamin Ellsworth)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Technophilia-induced problem at Educom?
Message-ID: <15124@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 24 Oct 90 03:36:35 GMT
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Reply-To: ben@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Benjamin Ellsworth)
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Index Number: 11247

[Note from Bill McGarry: This was from issue 10.52 of the RISKS
 digest.]

> The system must have used some kind of voice-recognition algorithm,
> because no human typist that I know could have kept up with the
> speaker at times.

I very strongly doubt this.  I would bet a substantial sum of money
that there was a stenographer and not a computer capturing the words.

> The weakness of the voice-recognition system was made painfully
> obvious...

There is RISK of assuming all failures are technologically induced.  It
could very well be that the stenographer hired was simply not very
good.  The good ones are expensive, and to do "real-time" stenography
takes a good stenographer.

There is a plausible explanation involving computer RISKs however.  The
translation from the steno notation to full english words was in all
likelyhood automated.  In stenography there are a number of dialects
(usually called theories).  Some dialects, especially the older ones,
are not particularly suitable to machine translation.  There are also
more than a few translation programs.  Between stenographic dialects
and computer translators there can be a significant compatibility
problem.  It could be that the stenographer was extremely capable in
the courtroom (where the translations are done off-line by a human),
while at the same time using a style/dialect/theory which was
incompatible with the machine translator.

There has been an interesting interaction between technology and court
recording in the last couple of decades.  My mother, for instance,  is
in the process of re-learning her stenography in a computer compatible
dialect.  It reminds me of pilots who have to learn to fly in a
computer compatible way (training around system weaknesses). 

Benjamin Ellsworth ben@cv.hp.com         All relevant disclaimers apply.