TY - JOUR
T1 - Biometric imaginaries
T2 - Formatting voice, body, identity to data
AU - Kang, Edward B.
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful for the contributions from and the conversations I had with friends, colleagues, and mentors in the writing and editing of this paper. These include, but are not limited to: Larry Gross, Josh Kun, John Cheney-Lippold, Tara McPherson, Mike Ananny, Jennifer Anne Petersen, Joanna Demers, Sergio Sismondo, and Amy Lee, as well as participants in the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference held in March 2021, and three anonymous reviewers. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - This article examines the sociotechnical imaginary within which contemporary biometric listening or VIA (voice identification and analysis) technologies are being developed. Starting from an examination of a key article on Voiceprint identification written in the 1940s, I interrogate the conceptual link between voice, body, and identity, which was central to these early attempts at technologizing voice identification. By surveying patents that delineate systems for voice identification, collection methods for voice data, and voice analysis, I find that the VIA industry is dependent on the conceptual affixion of voice to identity based on a reduction of voice that sees it as a fixed, extractable, and measurable ‘sound object’ located within the body. This informs the thinking of developers in the VIA industry, resulting in a reframing of the technological shortcomings of voice identification under the rubric of big data. Ultimately, this reframing rationalizes the implementation of audio surveillance systems into existing telecommunications infrastructures through which voice data is acquired on a massive scale.
AB - This article examines the sociotechnical imaginary within which contemporary biometric listening or VIA (voice identification and analysis) technologies are being developed. Starting from an examination of a key article on Voiceprint identification written in the 1940s, I interrogate the conceptual link between voice, body, and identity, which was central to these early attempts at technologizing voice identification. By surveying patents that delineate systems for voice identification, collection methods for voice data, and voice analysis, I find that the VIA industry is dependent on the conceptual affixion of voice to identity based on a reduction of voice that sees it as a fixed, extractable, and measurable ‘sound object’ located within the body. This informs the thinking of developers in the VIA industry, resulting in a reframing of the technological shortcomings of voice identification under the rubric of big data. Ultimately, this reframing rationalizes the implementation of audio surveillance systems into existing telecommunications infrastructures through which voice data is acquired on a massive scale.
KW - biometrics
KW - listening technologies
KW - sociotechnical imaginaries
KW - voice analytics
KW - voice biometrics
KW - voice technologies
KW - voiceprint
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U2 - 10.1177/03063127221079599
DO - 10.1177/03063127221079599
M3 - Article
C2 - 35257610
AN - SCOPUS:85125924637
SN - 0306-3127
VL - 52
SP - 581
EP - 602
JO - Social Studies of Science
JF - Social Studies of Science
IS - 4
ER -