The Web Speaks, Sort Of

摘要

Hold the (web-enabled cell) phone! a new wrinkle promises to breathe new life into any beat-up old handset. "Voice portals" that let you talk your way to Web-based information from any phone, cellular or not, are springing forth from startups coast to coast. Despite the Internet Age hype, delivering information and entertainment over the phone is hardly a new idea. In my youth, in the Fifties, an old-fashioned rotary phone could get recorded messages for weather forecasts and time of day, not to mention market data from the august firm of Moore, Leonard & Lynch. After 1983, when the FCC forced local telcos out of the recorded-message business, so-called audiotext burgeoned, with dial-a-porn services leading the way.