Update 'content/topic/listening-with-the-pandemic.md'

content/topic/listening-with-the-pandemic.md

@@ -19,15 +19,15 @@ If this sounds like a blueprint for intensified surveillance, for even greater c
 
 ## Thoughtlessness
 
-One US company hoping to capitalise on the pandemic sells [voice analytic technologies](https://www.clearspeed.com/technology/), which it claims can "vet for fraud, security, and safety risks" with greater than 94% accuracy. All this based on a 2-10 minute long phone call, in which it isn't what you say that matters, but how. Your voice, it is presumed, will betray you. Representation not only can but *should* be bypassed. Before the pandemic, this company's products were already available in 13 languages across 12 countries and 23 industries, including to government and military contractors. Today, they also offer “automated telephonic vocal risk assessment” for the determination of fraud in allocating Covid-related welfare and stimulus packages. How the system works, what precisely constitutes "vocal risk" and why, is never explained. It is, after all, proprietary.
+One US company hoping to capitalise on the pandemic sells [voice analytic technologies](https://www.clearspeed.com/technology/), which it says can "vet for fraud, security, and safety risks" with greater than 94% accuracy. All this based on a 2-10 minute long phone call, in which it isn't what you say that matters, but how. Your voice, it is presumed, will betray you. Representation not only can but *should* be bypassed. Before the pandemic, this company's products were already available in 13 languages across 12 countries and 23 industries, including to government and military contractors. Today, they also offer “automated telephonic vocal risk assessment” for the determination of fraud in allocating Covid-related welfare and stimulus packages. How the system works, what precisely constitutes "vocal risk" and why, is never explained. It is, after all, proprietary.
 
-This kind of digital snake oil isn't just a function of predatory capitalism and gullible investors. It's also a consequence of machine listening's original wager: that silicon ears might discern what meat ears[^Wark]  never could; that there is a layer of auditory truth beneath or beyond the threshold of human hearing, and that this can be accessed *only* by machinic systems whose workings, in many cases, cannot be reverse engineered or explained to those same human ears.
+The imaginary that underpins this kind of technology does not emerge with machine listening. It is directly related to the history of the stethoscope in medicine,[^Sterne, Rice] along with lie detection and personality profiling in security and policing.[^Goldenfein] But vocal risk analysis also extends and modifies these practices insofar as it follows on from machine listening's original wager: that silicon ears might discern what meat ears[^Wark]  never could; that there is a layer of auditory truth beneath or beyond the threshold of human hearing, and that this can be accessed *only* by machinic systems whose workings, in many cases, cannot be reverse engineered or explained to those same human ears.
 
 There is a profound and ramifying "thoughtlessness" here: at once ethical, political, and epistemic.[^McQuillan] Once you start down the road that machines might directly audit reality, where to get off? A computational physiognomy of voice becomes so much easier to imagine, sell, and embed.
 
 ## Touchlessness
 
-Most of us will experience machine listening as an interface. Say goodbye to spring-mounted keys and clicking mice, maybe soon even the quiet tap of fingers on capacitive glass. "Alexa," we command - or is it ask? - into an airy, expectant atmosphere. ![Touchlessness](audio:static/audio/andrejevic-on-touchlessness.mp3)[^andrejevic] refers first to this invisibility of interface, but it is also "social distancing", remote work, standing no less than 2m apart in a queue for toilet paper, and, in the case of corona voice diagnostics, the idea that computational systems might determine the presence of the virus from the sound of a person's speech or cough. SOMETHING ON THE STETHOSCOPE / MEDIATE AUSCULTATION
+Most of us will experience machine listening as an interface. Say goodbye to spring-mounted keys and clicking mice, maybe soon even the quiet tap of fingers on capacitive glass. "Alexa," we command - or is it ask? - into an airy, expectant atmosphere. ![Touchlessness](audio:static/audio/andrejevic-on-touchlessness.mp3)[^andrejevic] refers first to this invisibility of interface, but it is also "social distancing", remote work, standing no less than 2m apart in a queue for toilet paper, and, in the case of corona voice diagnostics, the idea that computational systems might determine the presence of the virus from the sound of a person's speech or cough (touchlessness is part of a history of stethoscopy and mediate auscultation too).
 
 There's no evidence yet that such a thing is possible, but many organisations are trying and they are thirsty for data {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://voca.ai/corona-virus/ "Voca.ai and Carnegie Mellon University partner to enable fast diagnosis of COVID-19"), [ii](https://covid-19-sounds.org/en/ "COVID-19 Sounds App"), [iii](https://news.mit.edu/2020/signs-covid-19-may-be-hidden-speech-signals-0708 "Signs of Covid-19 may be hidden in speech signals"), [iv](https://coughvid.epfl.ch/ "Send us a recording of a cough sound and help research on COVID-19"), [v](https://www.voiceome.org/covid19/index.html "Use Voice to Fight COVID-19"), [vi](https://futurism.com/neoscope/app-claims-covid19-voice "This App Claims It Can Hear COVID-19 in Your Voice"), [vii](https://www.soniphi.com/ "Soniphi is developing a screening solution for COVID-19 that uses your voice.  If you have recently tested positive we need your help")]{{< /nosup >}}. {{< nosup >}}["Donate your voice."](https://www.voiceome.org/covid19/index.html){{< /nosup >}} "Hit record and read the following sentences while pinching your nose." "Press record and cough three times." 
 
@@ -58,6 +58,8 @@ For such an ambient sensing environment to work, this very environment must be d
 [^Mattern]: Shannon Mattern, ['Urban Auscultation; or, Perceiving the Action of the Heart' *Places* (2020)](https://placesjournal.org/article/urban-auscultation-or-perceiving-the-action-of-the-heart/)
 [^Schuller et al]: LIBRARY, Schuller et al, COVID-19 and Computer Audition: An Overview on What Speech & Sound Analysis Could Contribute in the SARS-CoV-2 Corona Crisis (2020)
 [^Szendy, Vetter]: LIBRARY, All Ears; The Architecture of Control
+[^Sterne, Rice]: LIBRARY, Jonathan Sterne, “Mediate Auscultation, the Stethoscope and the ‘Autopsy of the Living’: Medicine’s Acoustic Culture,” Journal of Medical Humanities 2, (June, 2001): 115–36; Tom Rice “Learning to Listen: Auscultation and the Transmission of Auditory Knowledge,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, no. 1 (2010): 41– 61.
+[^Goldenfein]: Jake Goldenfein, Monitoring LAws; anyone know of a good critical history of lie detection?
 [^Wark]: LIBRARY, Capitalism is Dead
 [^McQuillan]: LIBRARY, Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism
 [^andrejevic]: Interview