I was watching a show on PBS called Genius by Stephen Hawking in which Hawking, the famous English physicist and cosmologist, induces people to figure out the answers to philosophic and scientific questions like “Why are we here?” and “Where did the Universe come from?”
Hawking narrated the show. Hawking is, unfortunately, almost totally paralyzed by a slow-progressing form of ALS. He can only communicate by a single cheek muscle attached to a voice-synthesis device.
I liked the show, and I imagine its intent was to make me think about the answers to Great Questions such as, you know, “Why are we here?” and “Where did the Universe come from?”
However, what I found myself wondering about was, “Why does Hawking’s voice synthesizer sound like the voice synthesizer in the 1983 movie Wargames?”
That movie is 33 years old. Voice synthesizers have gotten so much better. Automobile GPS systems come with multiple male and female voices that sound like natural human speech. Can’t Hawking get an upgrade for his voice unit?
Sure he can but, as it turns out, he likes the voice and identifies with it. And so do the rest of us. When we hear that robotic, American-accented Wargames voice, we know immediately who is behind the voice: a British genius named Stephen.
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