You don’t want to talk, that’s the thing. You don’t want U2 on your iPhone 6 and you don’t want to use your voice. The U2 part needs no explanation–or shouldn’t. But somebody might want to explain to Ray Ozzie–an absolute verifiable software genius and creator of Talko--why we don’t want to talk. Sure, when Ray Ozzie talks, people listen. The rest of us stumble a bit, lack cadence and authority, issue a few umms per voicemail (or conversation) and then hang up wishing we could redo it. That’s why phones are for texts and emails and pictures now, not voice. We look and sound better in print–as writers have known for ages.
Ray Ozzie’s return to the collaborative zeitgeist launched this week. It’s called Talko because it emphasizes voice as a collaborative tool. Big deal tech writer Steven Levy (Hackers, Insanely Great) wrote a big thing about Talko for Medium, where he’s now editor of the tech hub. Levy, who likes to write exciting stuff (Hackers reads like a thriller), is excited about the innovations of Ozzie’s Talko. No doubt the Talko technology is cool. But it hinges on this notion: “It’s not like the voice is an unimportant data type,” Ozzie tells Levy. A lot of futurists agree with that. Levy quotes one as saying “the revolution [in computer-assisted conversation] is coming.” But maybe the voice is an unimportant data type. Why go against the mountain of evidence piling up that says so? When the voice revolution does get here, don’t worry, someone will text you about it.
