Transcriber as a potential job title is a relatively new concept, but it has its roots in the early days of secretarial work, back when "dictation" wasn't voice recognition software, but a woman with a notepad scribbling away in shorthand. I am referring to the days of "Mad Men," strange days when your secretarial staff might outnumber everybody else, when gender norms kept women out of all but a few prescribed career paths, and when everyone was classy and drank old fashioneds. In those days, transcribing was used to take down notes of events and conversations transpiring in an office setting, a somewhat limited but crucial task. Transcription work hasn't so much changed as it's just moved out of the office, outsourced in one way or another. We may handle infinitely more types of material, from TV shows to dissertation interviews to market research to book notes, and the technology has changed and progressed, but in a way we are all still typing away on our (typewriters) keyboards. And we're still denoting events, just perhaps fictional ones, and not only for the benefit of the suit-and-tie type, but also for the sitting-on-the-couch-all-day type. Another throwback is stenography, which pushes the [...]
