In Praise of Software Scribes

How Automated Transcriptions Empower Authors and Everyone on the Internet

Image: A Scribe and a Woman by Rudolf von Ems (about 1400–1410)/The J. Paul Getty Museum

This post started with me, on my balcony, in -7 degrees Celsius. (19 Fahrenheit.) I was talking to my scribe, the Otter app on my phone. Thousands of years ago, scribes were a luxury afforded only to royalty, although I suspect a Pharoah would not have tolerated such cold weather. I went…