Technology seeking solutions

Catching up with articles on the always informative The Feature.com I hit this from earlier this year. To quote:

"If you're in the middle of a push-to-talk conversation and both parties become much more engaged, the system could suggest a transition from that tentative instant message-like mode into a traditional telephone connection," Aoki says. The users could tune their preferences so that the shift happens automatically, he says, or perhaps a key might illuminate to offer the option. That way, either party could decline the transition without forcing the participants to awkwardly announce their decisions or interrupt the conversation.

During their research, the scientists loaned college-age students two-way push-to-talk handsets to study how they used the service. While the participants appreciated the IM-like nature of the technology, it became clear to the researchers that "push-to-talk" is not always suited for the subject matter. For example, Aoki explains, you may be chatting with a friend in push-to-talk mode. As he becomes emotional while filling you on his relationship troubles, push-to-talk falls short.  The "uh-huhs" and other earnest cues that someone is truly listening to him are lost. Ideally, the push-to-talk mode would seamlessly shift into a full-duplex telephony channel.

To identify engagement, the software listens to the acoustics of the conversation. Features like the tone of the speaker's voice, the rise and fall in pitch, and the pauses between utterances are continuously analyzed using statistical algorithms. No training is necessary. The result is a pretty good estimate of the speaker's engagement in the conversation. Even a very early lab prototype of the system was accurate more than 60 percent of the time.

Some alternative thoughts occur to me. People could

• learn to listen to each other carefully
• not take part in tele conferences if they have nothing to gain/offer
• adapt behaviour to newish technologies like push to talk (I'm not convinced by this one - push to talk - at all)
• negotiate subtle social forms of conversing

All of these take some effort but build social capital. And may be better than technology solutions to technology problems.

Comments

[pandora online]

You changes sound great! Good luck to everyone in the election(s).

[pandora jewellery sales]

I hope someone can tell me how "progressive" this video is