~~~ On 2008/01/20 21:58, Greg Hankins at ghankins@mac.com wrote ~~~
> And updating your datebook on the subway using speech recognition
> could get you some pretty strange looks.
Just as much to the point for some of us at least is that any kind of data-
input by voice has huge security implications. For example:
1. forget about doing sensitive work on a bus, train or plane: security
screening your display from people nearby means nothing when people can hear
your every word (and in my experience voice recognition software doesn't
"like" whispering or low volume voice especially when there's background
noise);
2. securing your work in your own office or home goes from protecting
yourself from the more sophisticated and expensive forms of high-tech
industrial espionage to protecting yourself from much easier and cheaper
means of recording your voice; and
3. even securing your work in a work environment which is non-hostile but in
which there is an important reason for keeping the threads of work being
pursued by different people or groups entirely separate and untainted by
cross-contamination becomes difficult if there's a risk of colleagues
overhearing you talk to your computer or of you overhearing your colleagues.
Oh yes, and the "modern" tendency towards open office plans in many
workplaces would mean an increase in the general din of an office, with
people talking to their computers. The trouble is, that noise might not
only distract people trying to think their own thoughts, it conceivably
could interfere with voice recognition.
As for the more mundane problem of trying to use your computer via voice
recognition in a research library --!
My conclusion is that voice recognition sometimes could be fun if it could
be made to work properly (when I used it, it was much less reliable than HWR
on the Newton is for me), but it's not necessarily a good idea in many
circumstances and might be wholly inappropriate for many people. That much
I guess we all know, but when we take into account the importance of
security in many situations, the need for a reliable, versatile and
uncomplicated data-entry mode that's non-vocal becomes much more plain.
Just my 2P worth.
Shalom.
Christian
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
łAny sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.˛
-- what Arthur C. Clarke meant
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
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Received on Sun Jan 20 17:52:19 2008
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