It just struck me, I wonder how much of the resistance to it is probably because of "Open the pod bay door, HAL."
Another freaky thing hit me the other day, very disconcerting. I listen to public radio constantly at home, every morning. I imagine public radio has many reasons to want to cut costs, but unlike NOAA (the automated weather repeater you get on your weather radio as you drive through thunderstorms and tornadoes cross-country... sometimes I just listen so I can feel like Stephen Hawking is riding with me in the car... if I could just get it to talk about string theory or something fun), public radio would have REALISTIC sounding automated voice announcers, wouldn't they? I really don't think NPR is running segues and other bits from automated voice generators, but the trick of my ear is that I sometimes HEAR it that way. Maybe it is in the nature of the digital signal, I don't know, but either the fake voices being created now are being modeled on the inflections of NPR announcers (segue announcers, not story readers, who are clearly real people), or something about the transmission of those announcer voices is making them sound synthesized. I definitely have a few HAL moments while listening some mornings, that's for sure. Except it is usually that woman's synthesized voice, more like the 411 numbers. Calm and NPR-sounding women. I'm sure they test out great for delivering info in a style to keep us calm while we are being kept on hold. Chris On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Jeffrey D. Gimzek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Imagine 4 people in a small office all talking to their computers every 2 > seconds to say "new window....scroll down..... stop...up... select file...." > > I think it is mostly social, although everyone i know that has tried voice > command has given it up, even when trying home alone in the quiet house, so > the tech isnt there either. > > plus, talking is WAY slower than your hands. > > > > On May 13, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Jeff Garbers wrote: > > Most of us old-timers probably expected voice I/O to be a common part of > > personal computing by now. But here we are in 2008, and I don't see even > > early signs of voice emerging into the mainstream. Products like Naturally > > Speaking have some popularity, but my sense is that they're used far more > > for dictation than any sort of command and response interface. Both Mac OS > > X and Windows Vista have built-in speech recognition capability, but does > > anybody use them (or even know they're there)? > > > > So my question for the group is: why? Is it due to technical > > shortcomings, like recognition accuracy and dealing with background noise? > > Are there social issues, like not wanting to be overheard or feeling silly > > talking to a machine? > > > > Or is it that splicing a voice-based UI into current graphical > > interfaces just doesn't give a satisfactory user experience? > > > > This, to me, is the most intriguing possibility. Voice command today > > reminds me of the earliest versions of mice for PCs, which generated arrow > > keystrokes as you moved them around; although they were ostensibly > > compatible with the existing applications, they just didn't work well enough > > to justify using them. Could it be that an effective voice-based UI > > requires a more basic integration into the OS and applications? Perhaps we > > need an OS-defined structure for a spoken command syntax and vocabulary > > rather than just expecting users to speak menu items? > > > > Why aren't we talking to our computers yet? Should we be? > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
