Tuesday 17 August 2004

Pic of the day: Perhaps speech recognition too will mature into a truly useful servant, but right now it's an emergency technology. (Screenshot from the ending of the anime Pugyuru.)

More excuses

So, how about my speech recognition software? It should not matter all that much that my arm hurts if I can dictate to my computer.

Well, there are two things about that. One is that during the summer heat I have the window open and the fan running in the background. With the signal-to-noise ratio already in the "not recommended" zone, that really doesn't help.

The other part is that my voice isn't all that much better than my arm. I am not used to talking anymore. I live all alone, after all, and I don't spend time with friends in the fleshworld anymore either. At work I need to ask a few questions now and then, but conversations rarely take as long as five minutes.

So, I can dictate for five minutes, but sadly this doesn't say much. I need to correct almost every sentence a few times, and some words need to be spelled out. Speech recognition surely opens new doors if you physically don't have arms or can't use them, but as a time saving device it sucks. This should surprise no one: If this technology actually worked, it would be the next "killer application", bigger than spreadsheets, bigger than Windows. In science fiction, people have talked to their computers for decades. Perhaps one day that dream will come true. But not today.

Incidentally, this entry was not dictated. It was tapped on my Pocket PC with a stylus. Currently that's the only input method that works reliably in the bathroom...