'Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human- Computer Relationship'

Admit it. You have probably cussed out a voice-mail, airline, billing, or other automated-speech system, particularly when Ms. This Is Not a Recognized Name or Extension gets that snarky tone. You know the computerized voice isn't linked to anyone on the line, yet verbally, or at least mentally, you berate it all the same.

That's normal, say Clifford Nass and Scott Brave, a professor and a postdoctoral fellow, respectively, in Stanford University's department of communication. As authors of Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (MIT Press), they note that the conscious knowledge that speech can have a...