{"title":"联邦政府对语音合成技术发展的支持:以库兹韦尔阅读机为例","authors":"S. Bell","doi":"10.7560/ic58103","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Federal Support for the Development of Speech Synthesis Technologies: A Case Study of the Kurzweil Reading Machine\",\"authors\":\"S. Bell\",\"doi\":\"10.7560/ic58103\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"abstract:This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.\",\"PeriodicalId\":42337,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Information & Culture\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.6000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-03-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Information & Culture\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"91\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58103\",\"RegionNum\":4,\"RegionCategory\":\"管理学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"HISTORY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information & Culture","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic58103","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
Federal Support for the Development of Speech Synthesis Technologies: A Case Study of the Kurzweil Reading Machine
abstract:This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.