13 Jun The (Good?) Old Days – Part VI: Speech Recognition

As I try to be slightly ahead of the curve I am here to say that much is about to change in the world of technology in the 10 or so years to come. Namely: thanks in part to Apple’s dive into the speech recognition software world with the introduction of Siri in iPhones, I think everything will be different in the not too distant future.

There is a great old episode of the TV show Star Trek from the late 1960s. In the episode, a man from the future has come back to 1960s Earth where the starship Enterprise’s crew also finds itself. Captain Kirk spies the future man in a typical office speaking to a typewriter which, magically, is typing whatever he says! Kirk immediately knows this is not an Earth man from the 1960s.  As a kid watching that episode, I thought, “How cool would that be?”

Typing is a thing that’s been around for well over 100 years, the first typewriter was invented in the 1860s. When the “QWERTY” keyboard was adopted for home computers, suddenly typing was no longer something that only secretaries and college students did. Everyone now had to learn to type, and type fast! The world kept speeding up and those that were still doing “hunt and peck” on the keyboard were left behind.

Do not fret failed touch typists. It appears that, in time, speech recognition will indeed replace most if not all of what we type. The software embedded in the iPhone is pretty darn amazing – the earlier attempts at creating this software, primarily for disabled folks, were not very successful and had very limited capabilities. Now, I must say, as I dictate emails and texts with near perfect precision while I drive, including idioms, pronouns, and pulling names from my contacts, I am very impressed indeed. In fact it’s kind of annoying when I get to the office and have to hit the old fashioned keyboard!

Who wins with this? Bad typists of course. Also, anyone who remembers the age of dictating, when professionals recorded a proposed letter or memo into a tape recorder which was then transcribed and typed up by an assistant. Why? Because Siri doesn’t yet do much punctuation unless you prompt her. In other words, you need to say, “It was nice to see you – period.” That’s how we did it with dictation as well. Another winner….the speech recognition software companies. Watch these gang.