Touchy feely future?
The Guardian today has a report about the possible future of touchscreen instead of the now traditional mouse and keyboard. I think it’s completely missing the point — surely the future is in voice recognition.
I’m writing this using MacSpeech Dictate voice recognition software, which although not being a bad product, is far from perfect. I want the Blade Runner moment where I talk to my computer and it does what I say. I’m crap at typing and I don’t see why in the 21st century with the computer should be a tool for those can type well.
Voice recognition would be great for blind people, slow typists, the dyslexic, for replacing the ever-growing number of passwords needed to navigate and log in on the Internet, computer security etc
If a small company can make MacSpeech Dictate and get it to work more or less, imagine what would happen if Apple or Microsoft put them might into the project? Let’s face it ,touch is so 20th-century. It is time to have a conversation with the computer and I don’t think you have to be William Gibson to figure that out.
Technorati Tags: Apple, MacSpeech Dictate, Microsoft, Blade Runner, The Guardian, Voice recognition, William Gibson
August 9, 2008 at 1:22 am
MacSpeech produced Dictate using technology developed by a much larger company … Nuance. And this technology evolved on the Windows platform not OS X. Microsoft has an excellent free Speech to Text and Speech control technology that ships with all Vista machines. It is not as accurate as The Nuance technologies but much easier to use and and more productive in that it has unsurpassed correction options.
BTW the Nuance products for Windows and the Microsoft technology don’t sort of work … they really work.
Sam
Windows2Apples
August 9, 2008 at 6:59 am
Thanks for the comment, Sam
When I was looking for speech recognition technology, I read about Nuance and Dragon Naturally Speaking and was considering installing Parallels on my Mac so that I could use it. Finally I decided to buy Dictate as a way of supporting developers working on the Mac platform.
What I really want however, is a computer, any computer, which is entirely controlled by voice. I think it is completely crazy that in the 21st century we still need to be attached to machines by the keyboard and mouse or that we need to touch a screen.
Honestly I would buy any computer, Mac or Windows (or LINUX), with this capability. While I think it is fantastic that developers are working on speech recognition, I think the big boys need to get involved (and I don’t understand all the Mac fan boy sites getting excited about the rumoured new developments.).
I have written this with MacSpeech Dictate and I would say about 80% is correct. It’s not perfect, but for the moment it will have to do.
October 2, 2008 at 8:10 am
Be careful Chris! A perfect system of voice recognition is the beginning of end for English teachers (and other languages), professionals of translation, etc…
A.
October 2, 2008 at 12:16 pm
LOL Alberto – that’s progress…