“At first, divers will play back one of eight “words” coined by the team to mean “seaweed” or “bow wave ride”, for example. The software will listen to see if the dolphins mimic them. Once the system can recognise these mimicked words, the idea is to use it to crack a much harder problem: listening to natural dolphin sounds and pulling out salient features that may be the ‘fundamental units’ of dolphin communication.“
As it happens, the iPad wasn’t the only modern technology predicted by Douglas Adams. Researchers at Georgia Tech and the Wild Dolphin Project develop a machine that will (hopefully) speak dolphin — or at least speak at dolphins. Says a skeptic: “‘Imagine if an alien species landed on Earth wearing elaborate spacesuits and walked through Manhattan speaking random lines from The Godfather to passers-by.’”