magic-co-blog

[magic-co-blog]

Magic + Co. Brooklyn, NY

Within the voice industry, there has been speculation that the current period is a trough of disillusionment following the typical startup path-model of a new technology. However, this view stems from a fundamental misrecognition of the present and future applications of this paradigm-shifting technology. Over the summer, my company increased profits while working with companies across several industries and countries to expand the application of vocal technology. As more companies and innovators consider entering this space, we need to undertake a nuanced, careful examination of this industry to reveal what is truly happening and what is in store — not only in the voice industry, but also in the tech industry and in the broader U.S. economy.

First, voice represents a fundamental shift in an economy that is increasingly dominated by technology companies. U.S. companies did not transition to a web- and app-based infrastructure overnight; since 2007, a paradigm shift in the way consumers interact with brands has shifted jobs, attention, and dollars into digitized space. However, the buildup of this technology was gradual. Similarly, in 2003, no one had heard of Tesla: it took seven years to begin getting electric cars into consumers’ hands. Voice will not follow the curve of the startups that rise and fall every day in Silicon Valley. Instead, the transition to voice will be like our collective transition to electric cars and web-based spaced: slow, but inevitable.

Second, as consumers begin to interact with companies through vocal conversation rather than the visual interaction available on the web and in apps, it will fundamentally change the character of the tech sector. Just as digital disruption affected the roles of manufacturers, white-collar workers, and service workers, voice is poised to affect the innovators of old. UI/UX designers, front-end engineers, and in some cases mobile engineers have been trained to think and work visually: their skillset is designed to thrive online and in-apps, but these skills will not necessarily transfer to a new, aural and conversation-based space. While employees in these professions may have transferable skills, their current jobs may go the way of coal mining. The transition to voice will thus require the training and retraining of a new workforce, creating jobs as it expands throughout the next decade.

At this point, you might ask — if this transition is so inevitable, why hasn’t it happened yet? Why isn’t there a billion dollar app in the voice space? My answer is that the only constraint on the industry thus far is the lack of imagination in its launch. As Amazon and Google released Alexa and Google Assistant, they partnered with advertising agencies to hype their products through traditional print- and web-based campaigns. It got the devices in people’s hands, but it focused on the hardware, treating vocal technology as a static product contained inside a single box. Relatedly, they have tightly controlled the ecosystem of apps. Therefore, both consumers, the market, and even creators have failed to see the boundless potential for innovation and development in this space. However, as I can attest to personally, that is beginning to change: every day, companies recognize the need to get a foothold in vocal technology, and it is only a matter of time before the voice industry has its own (Google). It won’t be long before companies begin to invest more money in voice-based campaigns as they did in the traditional advertising that promoted Alexa in the first place.

Vocal technology has the potential to transform not just the tech sector, but our economy as a whole — and beyond. Twitter’s current ad campaign in New York City has covered walls and subways in giant tweets, trying to remind users (and non-users) that the company has changed the shape of public discourse: who we can talk to, who we can follow, and how we address friends and strangers alike. While it’s obvious that Twitter did change public discourse, their resort to traditional advertising in physical spaces to assert their ongoing relevance is telling. The reality is that, just as much as people on Twitter changed discourse, so did bots, and now, robotic voices are poised to enter conversations in our homes, on our devices, and beyond. As a whole new class of discourse is added to the public space, it has the potential to change our world and its discourse in ways we can perhaps not yet imagine.

So, no, the voice industry is not in a "trough of disillusionment.” It’s humming along, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s too loud for older tech companies to ignore.