Episode 92: Polite Sociopaths

Jessica and Michael explore voice interfaces, from Apple CarPlay to HAL 9000, the talking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey voiced by Douglas Rain, who died shortly after this episode was recorded.

Jessica, who keeps leaving her phone in the car “because I’m doing so much texting I forget I don’t need a phone in my hand anymore,” says that sound design

used to be something that happened in the recording studio. It was about something that happened in the movies, It had to do with your experience as a listener, spectator, audience member in terms of what the auditory experience was.

This, I think is, something different, because this has to do with cognitive understanding of the brain, of expectation of patterns of behavior.

Also mentioned this week:

• Zita Cobb
• Tim McKeough, Fast Company, How Multimillionaire Zita Cobb Plans to Turn a Tiny Canadian Island Into an Arts Mecca (2010)
• Hall of Femmes interview with Ida Wessel
• BankerWessel
• Cara Phillips, Common Bond
• Apple CarPlay
• Gerry Flahive, New York Times, The Story of a Voice: HAL in ‘2001’ Wasn’t Always So Eerily Calm
• Gerry Flahive, POV, “I’m Sure You’ll Agree There’s Some Truth in What I Say”
• The Kylie Bible
• Justin Timberlake, Hindsight
• Culture Is Not Always Popular: Fifteen Years of Design Observer,
• DogTV
• Ryan Vogt, Slate, Your Dog Will Not Like DogTV
• Visual Capitalist, Animation: The World’s 10 Largest Economies by GDP (1960-Today)

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