Siri Gets an Upgrade
The link above will take you to an article I found after reading an article about a woman who claims to be the original voice of Siri. Since I have been one to experiment with the settings on Siri by changing the language to Spanish in order to practice my linguistics, I was excited to hear that the new version of Siri for the iPhone's new iOS 7 system can be changed to a male voice.
This brought me to a question I had never thought of before: why was Siri's voice originally that of a female? Is this part of our gender acculturation that traditionally women have served in roles such as maids, housewives, stay-at-home-mothers, assistants, secretaries, or waitresses? I've been looking through news articles and have not been able to find a statement by the originators of Siri saying why Siri was primarily female, and why the decision was made to make the voice a male in the iOS7 update. Notice how the ability to make Siri's voice a male is/was not widely advertised.
Furthermore, is the option of having Siri as a male voice something revolutionary in terms of redefining gender roles in our society? How can technology be used to change our perception of men and women in society?
I'm really glad I read the article because I think I have an idea of why Siri originally a she. In the article it describes Siri as "the iPhone’s digital assistant." For decades the only work women could do was secretarial/assistant work. I do not think it is a coincidence that Siri was originally female. In class Toni mentioned that a majority of our ideas about the "natural" differences between male/female thinking is the acculturation we have received since birth. Clearly the ideas of a female assistant have been so ingrained into our culture that the Siri programmers assumed she should be female (the same is true of GPS navigation devices, the default voice is female, but that's a whole other ball of wax).
ReplyDeleteAs far as the voice change being revolutionary, I don't think it is and it's because the name is still "Siri" even with the male voice. Also, this didn't come out until the most recent software/phone update (Siri first appeared in the 4s and we're on 5s/5c now). Not to mention the fact that many GPS navigation devices had a whole set of accents you can choice from in addition to your male/female preference before Siri even existed. Apple missed the opportunity to redefine gender roles I believe.
As far as technology being used to change our perceptions of men and women in society, I don't know if I can think of an example that does this. When technology is developed, it's always developed with a target audience in mind and is designed based on cultural stereotypes and judgments. For something to redefine our perceptions, designers would either need to choose consciously to ignore what the "typical" target audience would want, or it will come by a complete accident.
I think that technology such as the iPhone has been very revolutionary. I’m not sure about its implications for gender roles here in the US, but Apple products, in addition to other technological products, can be found all around the globe. Globalization is kind of a revolutionary idea in of itself. In the past, what would happen more often was colonization or imperial conquest. This led to unidirectional flow of western or European ideals to the people who had been colonized. With globalization, what we see more of is a sharing of information and ideals. With globalization, the western world learns from the rest of the world too. It would be interesting to see what the reaction to a gendered Siri is in France, Saudi Arabia, and Rwanda for example, as well as American reactions. Additionally, going back in time a little bit, in class we did briefly touch on the revolutionary implications of technology like toaster ovens, refrigerators, and washing machines for the lives of women. I’m not sure that changing the gender of Siri’s voice is necessarily on that same scale, especially since, as Brianne mentioned, that option has already been implemented in other technologies, but change does have to start somewhere.
ReplyDeleteOne example that comes to mind of technology changing the way that men and women are viewed in our society is television and more specifically television advertisements. Women in television advertisements are nearly always sexualized, regardless of the product they are selling.
In a global market, how would a technology be developed to fit a certain stereotype, given that there isn’t even a global language let alone a global stereotype?
Even though I agree with Katie that in that making Siri a female voice and not making it a male voice is not that revolutionary since like Brianne mentioned other similar technologies gave the choice for it to be a male or female voice and the accent and Apple just missed out on this particular option. I think it was a marketing decision entirely or a time choice.
ReplyDeleteTechnology typically gets marketed to Men and men like hearing a females voice especially one that can be found "attractive" as well as the fact that socially it is okay for a woman to interact with a woman in certain aspects and it is okay for a woman and a man to interact, but generally men and men have a negative connotation in society for different types of interactions. Apple probably didn't want to alienate a certain group of people. This could of gone into the choice in making Siri a female. In addition, marketing a single Siri especially when it was brand new on the market would make a cohesive brand and make it easier to sell the idea of Siri. THen after this concept was popular they could then market other types of things.
Apple is also on a very tight release schedule with their iPhones. THey want to make sure that other manufacturers don't create a better phone and they lose some of their consumer base so they have to keep changing it up, so maybe there was just not enough time to make Siri have options the first time around.
Also in addition, Apple is an American company with a global outreach. Their technology is first and foremost typically created with the American consumer in mind. People from all over the world use American products and sometimes want to fit the American Stereotype and Apple is a part of that. So even though Apple has an international reach maybe they wanted to fit the American Stereotypes and the American ideals to appeal to this audience and then in turn appeal to the world? Because Katie makes a good point in saying that there is not global stereotype, so maybe it was just easier to pick the American and go with it.
Thanks for the great comments so far! I agree with most of the points you address; however, I think there is a global stereotype for women. Looking at anthropological evidence, we can see that women have been subjugated and demeaned across a variety of cultures. There are few cases, perhaps only a few small tribal cultures, which operated under a matriarchal construction.
DeleteI think Katie makes a great point about the potential for television advertising to both genders to display and potentially change the way we view gender. This summer I worked for P&G. At our intern event one of the speakers (a woman) was the leader of the London 2012 Olympics Campaign which celebrated women, and in particular moms. I've linked the commercial that I'm sure we've all seen and teared up to below. This campaign was one of the most successful in the companies history and grew the market share for most products over 300%. In this example, women were not sexualized at all. Another example is the Dove True Beauty campaign which I've also linked below. I think it is interesting that both campaigns target women specifically and do not hyper-sexualize them. I also believe that the success of these campaigns is in their ability to reach past the typical female advertising strategies and touch something emotionally relevant. If this success is copied I think it could easily show how technology can have revolutionary impacts on society.
ReplyDeleteP&G Thank You Mom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-20Qe4M8Y
Dove Real Beauty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk
Here's something novel... a short reply.
ReplyDeleteIn the military, many of the automated voices are female. For example, I was a Combat Engineer and therefore swept minefields and looked for other explosive devices with a metal detector. I was fortunate enough to have the military's best and newest device, which "talked" to the operator. This was much better than the crackling and beeping that was used before.
Anyway, that voice is also a female voice. We went so far as to call it Alice. What we were told when going through the training on this device was that men tend to listen AND respond to female voices more readily then male voices. Apparently this was backed by a lot of Army testing that I never bothered to look at.
Thanks, Alice.
I think Katie makes a great point about the potential for television advertising to both genders to display and potentially change the way we view gender. This summer I worked for P&G. At our intern event one of the speakers (a woman) was the leader of the London 2012 Olympics Campaign which celebrated women, and in particular moms. I've linked the commercial that I'm sure we've all seen and teared up to below. This campaign was one of the most successful in the companies history and grew the market share for most products over 300%. In this example, women were not sexualized at all. Another example is the Dove True Beauty campaign which I've also linked below. I think it is interesting that both campaigns target women specifically and do not hyper-sexualize them. I also believe that the success of these campaigns is in their ability to reach past the typical female advertising strategies and touch something emotionally relevant. If this success is copied I think it could easily show how technology can have revolutionary impacts on society.
ReplyDeleteP&G Thank You Mom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-20Qe4M8Y
Dove Real Beauty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk