Computer? Are you listening?
I am experimenting with Vista’s voice recognition software — a rabbit hole I fell down while setting up my new headset. Ironically, I’ve tried 4 times now to get Vista to type Vista and it doesn’t recognise the sound of its own name.
Still, it obeyed most commands and I know I have to train it to understand me. The question is, do I want to?
I’m a very able typist who works in an open office environment (open as in minimal walls). This is not conducive to having tete a tete’s with one’s computer. Not if one wants to drive her neighbours slowly insane. They hear my voice often enough anyway between phone support, podcasting and the loving things I mutter to my computer when I don’t have a headset strapped on.
At night in my quiet, childless home – my hubby and I share what other couples might have used for a dining room as our computer area . He needs to concentrate and, unless I’m chattering away in SL or experimenting with podcasting and/or vodcasting – I’m pretty quiet. Do I want to be having a natter with my computer on his time? Especially since the computer tells me it doesn’t have a command function available for the four letter action verb suggestions I make when Vista lets me down yet again? (Where the hell is that patch???)
For now, I’d just like to get my Vista operating system to obey my commands when I click on something using a mouse. I’d like to keep my relationships intact and, as I can type as fast as I can weave my thoughts into words, speech recognition doesn’t hold much appeal. And it poses a lot of issues for classic office set ups like the one in which I work.
Perhaps future generations will better leverage the planet-saving, sanity-saving and money-saving benefits of telecommuting and, due to their fabled ability to multi-task, will blithely dictate a letter to one program while massaging a video using an old fashioned mouse in another. For now, those of us in close proximity to other knowledge workers will have to let our fingers do the talking.