Word: humanities
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...such as Russian and physics that are considered standard by their more cosmopolitan counterparts. Now all that is changing, thanks to the arrival of the electronic classroom. By using interactive video, even small, disadvantaged schools are gaining access to the most sophisticated instruction available, and all without losing the human touch...
...last month Linda Hiwot, a Brooklyn junior high school teacher, got a surprise when she phoned her bank for a credit-card balance. Instead of the familiar human teller, she was answered by a computer-generated voice that told all callers with Touch-Tone phones to "press 1 now," thus beginning a series of steps that would eventually lead to her balance. When she called the IRS about an overdue tax check, another computer voice directed her to "push 9" for refunds. Even a local department store had acquired a robot operator, which like an overeager clerk insisted on taking...
...feeling Hiwot, and everybody else, had better get used to. The U.S., and much of the world, is in the midst of a sweeping technological conversion, replacing human secretaries and operators with a new kind of high-tech wizardry known variously as automated answering systems, voice-messaging units or, most simply, voice mail. In the past six years, tens of thousands of voice-messaging systems have been installed in stores, offices and government agencies. The units answer phones, route callers and dispense information ranging from baseball scores and movie reviews to weather reports and horoscopes. Even the Vatican...
...modern voice-messaging system was the common telephone-answering machine. But now, instead of talking to a simple tape recorder, people are conversing with a computer at the end of the line. At the heart of the new systems are special-purpose computer chips and software that convert human speech into bits of digital code. These digitized voices can then be stored on magnetic disks and retrieved in a flash, just like any other piece of computer data...
...powerful machines combine voice-message units with huge computer files, which enable callers to use their telephones to navigate through long lists of stock quotes or catalog items. Some units even allow a caller to order merchandise and charge it to a credit card, without ever speaking to a human...