Perfect Paul - still alive and kicking

Not much room there! But not to worry.
Research shows that airbags are safe for most outcomes!

The other day I heard something on the radio about word recognition software. Apparently, the original programs that provided this feature were normed on adult men. The devices couldn't hear women. That was the main concern of the interviewee, who also pointed out that the original air bags killed women and children because they weren't tested on them. Since I'm one of those people (short legs) who would have been killed by those air bags--I drove my second last car for seventeen years while waiting for the manufacturers to fix the problem--I'm very interested in inclusiveness in research and development. If those voice recognition programs couldn't hear women, well, they weren't going to listen to children, either, were they?

DECtalk DTC01, home of Perfect Paul

Which reminded me of Perfect Paul, the universal voice of text-to-speech in the good old days, when we were amazed that such things existed. Good old dependable, monotonous guy, the spokesman of DECtalk. We loved him.

But why not let the poor guy retire? Surely he's earned it. Why do I still hear him around? Okay, so he's only working part-time now, but technology has marched on, and inclusiveness has become ever more. Here's to equal opportunity for automated voices! Women, children, accents! I'll know we've arrived when the voices on the computers in museums, tourist bureaus, etc back home, have Newfoundland accents. As dey shood.