Voice | featured news

A British man who will lose his voice because of disease said Sunday that he is recording thousands of words so he can continue to read his son bedtime stories. Laurence Brewer, from Bolton, northern England, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) three years ago and expects to lose his speech as his condition worsens.

The idea that people should be able to talk to computers, and that the computers should understand what we're saying, has been coming in and out of vogue since the 1970s. The technology never really went mainstream, though, and to this day, it's often talked about as a joke.

Film critic Roger Ebert says computer programmers have captured his voice from movie commentary tracks so he can type what he wants to say and listeners hear a vo