I was recently summonsed (yes, the word really is “summonsed”) to appear for jury duty.  As part of the voir dire process, lawyers on both sides questioned each juror individually to unearth any possible sources for bias.

I was asked to sit at a conference table with the judge on my left and court reporter on my right.  A laptop attached to the reporter’s stenotype machine was in plain view, and was evidently running some fancy software to translate her machine shorthand into an English transcript as she typed.

The most fascinating part of the entire voir dire experience was watching every word I spoke appear on the screen at almost the moment I uttered it, faithfully reproducing everything said in the room in real time, complete with attributions for each remark:

SMITH: Have you ever bought or sold a firearm?*

THE JUROR: No.  Never.

SMITH: You indicated you've watched Cops on television.  Have
any episodes involved the use of a firearm?

THE JUROR: Certainly.  Many episodes have.

SMITH: Would that influence your ability to be impartial about
the use of firearms in this case?

THE JUROR: No, sir.

I tried using Dragon Naturally Speaking about a year ago to transcribe some video tutorials we were creating at work.  It failed spectacularly to achieve even the most basic speech recognition, and I returned it.  Now I understand the problem: I only installed the software; I never thought to call in a qualified stenographer!

In the courtroom, I was impressed first by how quickly and accurately the court reporter could record shorthand — even during a rapid-fire objection and response to one of the questions asked.  As a software developer, I was also impressed with the application that translated shorthand back into readable English, complete with correct attributions for every statement.

* I obviously cannot discuss any details of the real trial to which I’m assigned, so I’ve invented a completely fictitious trial to provide details for such anecdotes as this. In this imagined case, three defendants are accused of transporting illegal firearms across state lines to be used by very young members of a gang in a series of liquor store robberies.