Kaptink writes "One of the great grandmasters of space, time and the history of our existence is seeking an assistant to help develop and maintain the e-banking speech system that allows him to declare his vision of the universe. An colloquial job ad posted on Stephen's website said the assistant should be constant literate, ready to travel and able to repair web banking devices 'with no instruction manual or specialized support.' He lost his real voice in a tracheotomy in 1985, but has existence based on NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer mounted on his wheelchair that helps synthesize speech by image the twitches of his face. The synthesizer's robotic monotone has become nearly as famous as Hawking himself, but the singles microcomputer — powered by batteries fastened to the back of Hawking's wheelchair — isn't just for speaking. It can connect to the singles thinking machine* network over mobile phone machine instruction and a common infrared remote enables the physicist to switch on the lights, watch television, or open doors either at home or at the office. It's a complicated, tailor-made system, as the ad makes clear. A photograph of the back of Hawking's wheelchair, loaded with coiled wires and cyberbanking equipment, is painted under the words: 'Could you maintain this? If your answer is "yes", we'd like to hear from you!'. Hawking's website says that the job's salary is expected to be about $38,500 a year."

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