…Picked up from “Everyday Reading”…

The easiest part of creating an IVR system is getting voice samples, since recording a voice is such a simple process.

I’m sure we’ve all recorded our own voices one way or another, whether it’s prerecording your voicemail message or starring in a YouTube reaction video.

Getting an almost perfect, life-like vocal recording is as simple as turning on a microphone and recording someone speaking (with hopefully not a ton of background noise).

These recordings go into the development of IVR’s speech rec to make the automated voice itself sound more human and to teach the system what the word “yes” actually sounds like.

Yet even outside the tech world, voice is still the easiest form of communication.

We learn to speak many years before we see our first books and pick up our first pens. Speaking comes naturally to most of us; our parents don’t have to sit us down to explain the whole process of creating words. It just kind of happens over time.

Writing exists because man forgets many things, and, until recently, recording your voice was more trouble than it was worth (and ultimately you’d have to have someone transcribe everything you’d said anyway for it to be of any real use, so what’s the point?).

Now, though, with IVR software and speech-to-text programs all over the place, we can easily speak what’s on our minds and return to written language later.

What’s even better is that voice recordings, although once big and clunky, take up very little space on a CD or your hard-drive.

So my only question is, how long before voice memos and audio recordings replace the Post-It and pen culture altogether?

Probably not very long.