Following is an excerpt from the introduction to “Designing Effective Speech Interfaces”.
“I think it�s because speech is something that is uniquely human. Dogs bark, and chimpanzees can communicate with �written� language, but only humans talk. To talk is to be human, and HAL and �Computer� stick in our memory because they are computers with uniquely human traits. We are fascinated by this idea, and maybe even repelled by it.”
“No wonder, then, that speech capabilities in computers seem to hold that love/hate, avoidance/attraction aspect for us. Speaking is so natural to us as humans, that we want to be able to talk to our computers. It seems that it would be easier. And we want our computers to talk to us, because listening to information rather than reading it leaves our eyes and hands free to do other tasks. Yet we hesitate. We come up with so many reasons not to embrace the technology.”
“True, the reasons are plentiful and many are all too valid. The state of speech recognition, and dealing with errors it produces is enough to still drive many away. I used speech technology, specifically dictation systems when I was writing this book. I dictated the phrase ��and manual output, and performance was worse with auditory input and spoken output�. When I glanced up at the screen the recognizer had written �and Immanual Kant put an the of paint boatman and Spokane output�. ”
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