Voices Echoing in the Clouds

Abstract

Natural language technologies are now able to listen to and process our voices and languages in real time. Voice-controlled digital assistants have emerged as multipurpose human-machine interfaces. We can train them to recognize our particular speech patterns and we can talk to them. Duplex and Alexa – two voice-controlled cloud-computing services – are described as instances of the datafication of language and subjectivity, and as archaeological echoes of telephonic technologies. The phantasmatic and acousmatic resonance of a disembodied and ubiquitous voice is the ultimate aural-oral embodiment of the human. Through algorithmic transactions between listening and speaking, the naturalization of computer-mediated communication obscures the deep commodification of symbolic exchange. At the same time, voice and language are revealed as technologies of the human.