Text Will Go Away? Unlikely

Predictions

from the yeah,-right dept

Smart Mobs is linking to a story about a “futurist” who claims that the written word is going away. It seems that we hear something like this every so often, and every time these futurists say that text will be replaced by audio speech. People will talk to their computers and their computers will understand and talk back. Of course, if you speak to anyone in the voice recognition world, they’d tell you this will never happen — and if anyone should support this viewpoint, it would be those folks. The reason is not because the technology won’t be good enough, but because voice is not the best interface for all things. Sometimes it is, but text is often much more efficient. Also, spoken commands become problematic when others are around. Imagine how noisy your office becomes when everyone (including the computers) are talking rather than typing or displaying text. Second, for any kind of private or confidential info, people obviously prefer to input in a way that doesn’t broadcast the info to everyone around them. Also, with the rise of the internet, email and instant/text messaging, it certainly seems like text plays a more important role in many people’s lives today. He mentions this in the interview, but shrugs it off by suggesting he’s “looking at other trends.” Yup, you can prove anything you like by consciously ignoring the trends that disagree with your theory.