voice activated computing 6 of january, 1997 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

One of many shockers in the computing industry right now is the speed at which voice recognition is entering our every day life. Simply put: it isn’t. I do not know about the rest of you, but by the mid 1990’s I fully expected to be operating my computer by speaking to it. Unfortunately, the possibilities of voice recognition have not invaded the computing industry. So far, they have barely made their mark.

I can remember six years ago when I ran my first voice activation program. It was a little add-on to the Amiga Workbench operating system that allowed programming of the system to load programs based on the recognition of anything I said. I was so excited I had set up a permanent head-set to be worn whenever the computer was used. For the most part, the product worked. I would program it to recognize when I said "Final Writer", and it would load my favorite word processing program. Sure, it was not perfect. While I was wearing the head set, the computer would not be able to differentiate when I was speaking to it, or when I was speaking to someone else. Never the less, it served a function, and it was a hell of a lot quicker than "point and click".

Today, voice recognition has not gone much beyond this stage. You can still get programs to add to your operating system to load programs much in this manor. There is even some software available for rude dictation. But, the technology really has not grown much beyond where it was a decade ago. And even simple program loading voice recognition has not become a standard part of main stream operating systems.

Computers really have not evolved much beyond the 1984 Macintosh. Today we still operate our little machines by pointing and clicking. Yes, the graphic user interface has gotten more powerful, in some ways it might have even gotten a little easier to use, but the revolution or voice recognition still seems to be a ways down the road. When your average Joe Cool buys a new personal computer and can operate it easily just by talking to it, that is when computers will truly be easy to use. Unfortunately, we seem no closer to the day when this will happen than six years ago when I first started experimenting with voice recognition.

What is going on in the programming rooms at Apple and Microsoft that keeps them from jumping on to this seemingly simple tool? Is it that the technology to operate computers with nothing more than a speaker is still decades down the road? Hardly. The technology would have been easy to incorporate into an operating system over a decade ago. Is it because people do not want the technology? That does not seem likely either. Almost every non computer user I ask "if you could operate a computer just by talking to it, would you finally use one?" almost always answers "yes". So why hasn’t it happened yet?

It really is hard to say. There was rumor that the Taligent operating system ("Pink") that IBM and Apple were working on would be based on some sort of voice recognition. I was one of the many disappointed folks when they announced the end of that project a few years back. IBM has been advertising the OS/2 ability for voice recognition quite a bit on TV. Unfortunately, OS/2 is not an operating system that non-computer users would consider these days, so even if it was the greatest thing since the icon, it would not matter. Third party companies like Sound Blaster have tried their hand at the voice recognition crowd. But, really. We are talking about people who do not want to learn how to use a mouse. How would they know that such a product was available, let alone how to install it?

Bottom line for voice recognition: It is going to have to be an integral part of a Microsoft or Apple operating system before it is given any credence. The whole point of voice recognition is that it makes a computer so easy to use that even someone who has never touched a keyboard or mouse would be able to load a game of solitaire. If it requires loading extra software, or configuration, or any other complicated extras, it simply will not work.

Handwriting recognition can not be that much easier than voice recognition, can it? I have done some studying of wave forms, and each word has a pretty standard look to it no matter who is saying it. So why is handwriting recognition advancing so much faster than voice recognition?

These are all great questions, and none with good answers. The only certainty about voice recognition is that when it finally becomes a standard piece of operating systems, that it will have the ability to revolutionize computing. Sure, most of us will continue to use the keyboard and mouse, but voice recognition would only help to enhance our computing experience.

How long do we have to wait? Your guess is as good as mine.