Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/52

 a long document, and either through the use of black-type headlines, or by pure skill, alight upon exactly the passage required; and if it were necessary, in order to find a given passage, to listen to the whole document being read over by the recording phonograph, no doubt much time would be lost. We shall not be so extremely intolerant of loss of time, perhaps, in the new age, as some people imagine: but in any case, if the speed of the phonograph be imagined as adjustable, it will be perceived that we could then make it gabble parrotwise over the inessential, and let it linger with more deliberation over what we wanted to assure ourselves of. We could even "skip" useless portions—one can do this with phonographs already in use. Probably such aural records may be made capable of acceptance in courts of law, and the maxim verbum auditum manet will take the place of a well-known proverb of our day. Very likely business letters may some day take the form of conveniently-shaped tablets, made of some plastic material, and capable of being utilised by means of a talking machine.

Or if these changes seem too chimerical, we may essay the more difficult task of conceiving a means by which the spoken word may be directly translatable into print or typewriting. The waste of time and energy entailed by the present plan of dictating what we want to say to a stenographer or into a phonograph, for