In the future everything you say will be searchable

This story first aired in September 2015.

Imagine if everything you said out loud was automatically recorded, transcribed, and stored in a searchable form, forever.

That's exactly what James Somers imagines in a recent article for Nautilus:

Think of all the reasons that you search through your email. Suddenly your own speech will be available in just the same way. "Show me all conversations with Michael before January of last year … What was the address of that restaurant Mum recommended? … When was the first time I mentioned Rob's now-wife? … Who was at that meeting again?" Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University and a co-author of a forthcoming book on evolutionary psychology, has speculated that we might all get in the habit of peppering our speech with keywords, to help us look it up later.

James joins Nora to explore the social impact of "the Speakularity," the tipping point beyond which automatic speech transcription becomes the norm.