In an Age of High-Definition Digital Audio, Why Do We Still Use Human Stenographers?

Stanley Sakai
The Startup
Published in
8 min readJan 26, 2020

Male stenographer writing on a shorthand machine in front of a large audience.

Ah, the dreaded questions stenographers and court reporters have had to endure hearing over and over again: “Why are we still hiring stenographers when we could just be recording the proceedings and typing them up later?” and “Isn’t your job going to be obsolete soon?”

Stanley Sakai
The Startup

Software Engineer, Live Stenographer. Talk to me about linguistics, stenography, the universe, and houseplants. House, trance, and techno enthusiast.