Friday, February 22, 2008

Speech vs. Typing

I don't see this happening--perhaps in 15 years, but not in 5:
In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University.
If nothing else, it's going to take a good while for anyone over the age of 17 to get comfortable talking out loud to a computer. My grandmother could barely leave a voice mail message. I still feel weird giving an verbal account number to a bank computer somewhere, and almost always choose to enter the digits by hand.

2 comments:

John Fleck said...

This is one of those things like nuclear fusion and workable artificial intelligence that is always just beyond the technological horizon.

Geodizzle said...

Yes, I have a feeling we will deffinately get to this point in the future, but it will take longer for us to get to the point where we are comfortable talking to a machine. I hate those phone situations where you have to say some kind of password outloud to a machine that is on the other side... it's awkward.