Taking Back Talk: The Resurgence of Voice Communication
By Jesse Robbins, CEO and Founder of Orion Labs
Our voices are one of the most powerful forms of human connection, allowing us to connect, collaborate, convey emotion and share intention in the most efficient way. So, it is striking that while many new types of text messaging have proliferated recently, the fundamental experience of voice hasn’t changed much since the first telephones and two-way radios were introduced.
The reason for this is simple. Text is far easier to capture, share and store — that’s why we had the telegraph before the telephone. It is why we had newspapers before we had radio broadcasts and email before video conferencing. It is also why the wildly successful messaging and collaboration apps on our smartphones have, so far, mostly been about shared text. If the cycles of innovation in the past are a guide, though, voice will be a major part of next wave of communication.
The technology that new kinds of useful, real-time voice communication need has only recently emerged on smartphones and networks. Now, we have powerful devices connected to fast, high-quality networks with inexpensive, accessible services on the backend. Ideas that were easy to dream of a decade ago, including intelligent voice agents like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant, have only recently started to become useful.
This next generation is already taking voice beyond phone calls to make our devices more intelligent and make people able to work better together. We’re already seeing companies tackling the reinvention of the phone call. Skype was one of the earliest examples, freeing people from landlines and enabling them to make phone calls anywhere with an internet connection. Path Talk is inserting a middle man into the equation to enable users to avoid phone calls altogether. Ray Ozzie’s venture, Talko, which was acquired by Microsoft, replaced traditional conference call technology with cloud-based VOIP calling while incorporating office productivity tools based in voice. But despite the promises these technologies offer, none of them have addressed the major problem with our smartphones — they disrupt us from our lives and take us out of the moment.
Most smartphone apps work by interrupting people. Voice communication has the potential to change that by keeping people in the moment instead of removing them from it. In my own experiences as a volunteer firefighter, a distraction — looking at a smartphone — is the last thing I want in an emergency situation. Attentiveness can literally save lives by keeping you focused on what you’re doing. Rather than making life more cumbersome, voice-driven group communication will enable technology to integrate more harmoniously into our lives.
Several companies are approaching this problem from different angles. One attempt to change the disruptive nature of smartphones is through wearable technology. Ringly, for example, uses a ring to subtly notify users of phone calls and emails through vibrations and light changes. The Apple Watch promises to bring all the of usefulness of our smartphones to our wrists, removing the need to fumble around in a bag or pocket when a notification sounds. However, no one company has truly found a way to remove disruption entirely while maintaining a quality voice connection. There is potential, though, for major inroads in discreet voice communication in the area of intelligent agents.
Although intelligent agents already exist, future applications go well beyond Siri or Cortana’s current capabilities. Instead of hitting a button and asking a question, they will eventually become always-on and part of everyday life. Rather than forcing a person to take a step back from the situation he or she is in, intelligent agents integrate technology seamlessly into our lives.
Amazon has recently introduced Echo, their first major foray into voice recognition devices. While its features are somewhat limited, it does offer a glimpse into what voice communication might someday be. Imagine verbally creating your shopping list while searching through the pantry or receiving a lunch recommendation by enquiring out loud — they’re just a few of the many possibilities voice presents.
Despite voice communication’s pluses, though, it is not going to replace text entirely as a communication medium. Much like tablets haven’t replaced laptops or desktop computers entirely, email, SMS and other real-time messaging aren’t going anywhere soon. They provide a useful interface and experience for their particular type of communication. Still, voice is a channel that has been missing for many of these situations, and text simply isn’t a worthy substitute, and it isn’t without problems. When there is a device constantly listening in to your life, security and privacy become major issues. One of the major challenges companies will face is how to establish trust with their users.
Along with the promise of always-on, responsive agents simplifying our lives comes a slew new concerns for the future. Security and privacy become major issues when companies are capable of listening in on your life. Companies have botched this before — look at Microsoft’s mismanagement of XBox One’s always-on feature. With privacy concerns already high, one of the major challenges companies face is going to be how to build trust with their users.
Voice communication has been critical throughout history. Today’s entrepreneurs are taking advantage of highly-powered smartphones and cloud computing systems to change the way we communicate on a very fundamental level. From group collaboration solutions to always-on intelligent agents, our voices will carry farther and more powerfully than than ever before.
