… Wearable devices like Google Glass are only a hint of what is to come — ever smaller and cheaper, and tied to inexpensive digital storage. Records of voices and events will be a permanent part of the Internet the way text is already, held forever and searched, mined and inspected. Casual conversations and off-the-cuff quips are about be put through the data blender, scrutinized and organized and pumped through algorithms in search of deeper meaning. Computer analysis of talk will yield new insights by closely analyzing the so-called metadata of speech — its intonations, pauses and interjections. [cont.]
Quentin Hardy, New York Times