title: We don't need to consume speech at the speed it's generated
date: 2019-03-09 07:22:12
slug: we-dont-need-to-consume-speech-at-the-speed-its-generated
status: published
display_format: entry
link: https://jj.isgeek.net/2019/03/we-dont-need-to-consume-speech-at-the-speed-its-generated/
syndication: https://twitter.com/jjdelc/status/1104281215857774593


Today I was driving and playing podcasts as always at 2x speed. My mom listened to it and asked how could I understand what they were saying.

I answered that I didn't need to wait the full time they took to speak at normal speed to understand the idea they meant to say, and then it clicked. All our lives we've assumed that spoken speech needs to be consumed at the same speed it is generated, because we have to listen to the person as they struggle to spit out their idea and construct their words into sentences and regroup and try again to explain being helpless as to wait for that to finish.

Since conversations always happened "live" for most of conversations history, and recorded speech is only a recent thing, it was natural that recorded speech is played at its natural recording speed, at 1x.

But there is no need that we have to consume speech at the same speed it was generated. A stretched analogy may be like having to read a book in the same time it took to write it. 

We can break that 1:1 construction/consumption ratio with speech thanks to technology. Most people is not used to this, but it's just matter of practice. A cheap way to increase our input bandwidth.