The genius of VocalID

How this escaped my radar, I'll never know, but it's brilliant.

FIRST: take a moment to think of Stephen Hawking's voice

THEN: read on...

Just after I first arrived in Korea, I was listening to NPR TED Radio Hour when I heard Rupal Patel being interviewed about her big new idea for synthetic voices. I was so inspired by the story, and I remember tearing up when I heard some of the voices that were created for people with speech disorders. The new technology blends together the speech sounds of a person who is unable to speak with sounds from a voice donor and creates a brand new, unique computerized voice for the individual... [read more on the Life in Limbo blog].

Many of those with severe speech disorders use a computerized device to communicate. Yet they choose between only a few voice options. That's why Stephen Hawking has an American accent, and why many people end up with the same voice, often to incongruous effect. Speech scientist Rupal Patel wanted to do something about this... [watch the TED Talk].

UVic linguistics associate professor Sonya Bird was listening to the CBC Radio “Spark” program in early 2014 when she first heard the voice of Rupal Patel, a Canadian researcher based in Boston who launched the VocaliD Human Voicebank in May 2014. The interview ignited Bird’s immediate interest in contributing to Patel’s mission to connect those living with a severe speech disorder (or limited speech) to their own unique vocal identities. Now, as a result of an eight-month volunteer effort by the Voice Drive Victoria group in collaboration with local speech language pathologist Gail Poole, more than 100 people in our region have donated their voices to this global effort ... [read more about UVIC's contribution].

VocalID links
About VocalID
About the VoiceBank

Related resources
Synthetic voices, as unique as fingerprints - TED Tallk by Rupal Patel
Everything you need to know about donating your voice: Why you should help The Human Voicebank Initiative - TED Blog
Lending voice to an international initiative - UVIC
Speech Donors - CBC Spark Podcast
Vocal ID: Donate Your Voice - Life in Limbo blog

Farewell Stephen Hawking

It almost seems like he planned it, Stephen Hawking died on Pi day, the day Albert Einstein was born...3.14.…
@Kilderok on Twitter

It's not the only remarkable date in Hawking's life: he was born on Jan. 8, 1942 ― the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death.

Reading the Huffington Post's extremely well written story on the passing of Stephen Hawking, I was struck by how his brilliance was hidden by the very things we (society) criticize youth for:

• "Hawking was an indifferent student, preferring to spend his time playing board games and tinkering with computers."
• "He rarely attended lectures and has said that he spent only 1,000 hours on studies during his three years at Oxford, or just an hour a day."

Hawking was given just 2 years to live while he was still a student. An excerpt from the same article:

During a symposium at Cambridge on his 70th birthday, Hawking reflected on how much he struggled to stay motivated after his diagnosis. "Why work so hard for a Ph.D. when you could be dead in two years?"

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, was published in April 1988 and shot him into the limelight. Both a Newsweek magazine cover and a television special described him as "Master of the Universe".

Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and reportedly enjoyed partying and dancing into the small hours.

But his schedule left him little time for work and his students, and some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability. I personally find this both sad and disturbing.

A Brief History of Time sold an estimated 9 million copies. And, no, I have not read it (yet)...

Trivia:

• Hawking reportedly declined a knighthood.
• On 28 June 2009, as a tongue-in-cheek test of his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible, Hawking held a party open to all, complete with hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne, but publicised the party only after it was over so that only time-travellers would know to attend; as expected, nobody showed up to the party.
• At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on Star Trek. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993.
• Also in 1993, Hawking's synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking".

Resources:
Hawking's website
Stephen Hawking collected news and commentary - The New York Times
Iconic Physicist Stephen Hawking Dies At 76 - Huffington Post