Are you talking to me?

Speech recognition technology has been around for a long time, in its early days it frustrated the hell out of a lot of people who generally gave up on it after one try. But, according the Microsoft boss Bill Gates, we’re going to be increasingly interacting with our computers using touch screens or speech. One of the big bets for the boys at Microsoft, they reckon in five years more interest searches will be done through speech rather than through typing.

MyTake – We need a leap like this to kick-start a new era in personal computing. I think that the humble PC has developed very little when it comes to the basics – keyboard, screen etc… and just like the their brothers in the automotive industry, the computer giants are going to have to innovate to stay ahead. The funny thing is that touch screen and speech recognition technology have been around for a while now, but we the consumer have been reluctant to embrace it, which I think comes down to a trust issue – “Did I really put that book in by online shopping basket by doing that?”, “What if it misunderstands me and transfers $100,000 instead of $100”. But just like all the other things we’ve gotten used to, we’ll get used to this.