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Anybody willing to take a bet that my keyboard is not going anywhere in my lifetime? The first time I was told that voice recognition is here and my keyboard i

Anybody willing to take a bet that my keyboard is not going anywhere in my lifetime? The first time I was told that voice recognition is here and my keyboard is going away was about 20 years ago. Here I am today, still strangling to have Alexa understand simple commands. Thought controlled input? Forget about it in this lifetime.

ohjeez 9y ago
I wrote a book about speech recognition -- and I _wrote_ it, I didn't speak it. I discovered that speaking uses different mental muscles than writing does. That's fine, because some people are more comfortable with one than another (such as doctors who are happy dictating but don't want to type). Also I remember when computer mice were new, and plenty of people said, "I can't imagine using that." I think that's true of other types of user interface as well, from haptics to whatever comes next. Sometimes you have to envision what _could_ be, and discover from experience what reaches people... or a subset thereof.
sspyder 9y ago
No because you seem biased to keep it and can control the outcome of the bet. Anybody willing to take a bet that my keyboard is going to evolve radically or disappear altogether in my lifetime?
yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Mice work well. Voice recognition works well for me. I still use the keyboard for most real work. Similarly, I think we will see some degree of brain reading, but at least the first generation or two won't replace other input methods.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I'm sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning with...an iPad. My keyboard is still at the office, but I don't use it as much as I used to.
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hesdeadjim 9y ago
I'm more on your side than not when it comes to these bombastic claims. That said I think consumer level mind interfaces will happen, and be useful, but much more so as a way to augment traditional input. It's a bit boring to think about, but given some of the research that has been able to reconstruct a (poor) image from brain activity, I could imagine using something like that to open applications by imagining their icon. Continue down this line of thinking and it is entirely possible that we will begin to construct an entirely new symbolic language to interact with these interfaces. I mean if a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe it's more effective path to follow than obsessing over perfect speech recognition.
melling 9y ago
How old are you? It’s really not that hard to imagine the keyboard being replaced by one, or a combination, of technologies in the next decade or two. Voice has gotten dramatically better in the past few years. Another decade? There are also gesture technologies: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 Anyway, if you’ve got 3 or 4 decades of life, you still think we won’t have sufficient advances to replace the keyboard?
- jodrellblank 9y ago
  I can't imagine what a replacement would look or behave like. You can replace your keyboard with almost anything that proxies human to computer, but nothing else is the same or as capable. The radar video is impressive (as were Leap Motion videos, which didn't live up to the hype), and sure it makes sense for extending a watch or phone, but the problem with autocorrect and voice recognition and predictive keyboards and spell checkers is much of the time, I'm not writing clear, coherent, English sentences. Sufficient advances to write foreign words and jargon and deliberate misspellings and usernames and hostnames and slang and quotes which are deliberately not spelled normally? A lot of the claims about "you'll just think it" hide the reality - e.g. when I try to speak a password and I can't, because it's just a pattern of motion (and you can't escape this overall problem by saying you won't need passwords in the future). Human hands are dextrous and sensitive, almost no other body parts are anything like as much - voice is laborious and prone to problems of pronunciation and tiredness and background noise and homonyms, anything else isn't going to come close until you can have brain surgery implants - and even then a) no thanks and b) I bet that still underestimates the complexity of reading clear intent.
hedning 9y ago
If sub-vocal recognition [1] (together with suggestions) gets as good as voice recognition I think we could finally have a viable alternative to the keyboard. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition
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ohjeez 9y ago

I wrote a book about speech recognition -- and I _wrote_ it, I didn't speak it. I discovered that speaking uses different mental muscles than writing does. That's fine, because some people are more comfortable with one than another (such as doctors who are happy dictating but don't want to type). Also I remember when computer mice were new, and plenty of people said, "I can't imagine using that." I think that's true of other types of user interface as well, from haptics to whatever comes next. Sometimes you have to envision what _could_ be, and discover from experience what reaches people... or a subset thereof.

sspyder 9y ago

No because you seem biased to keep it and can control the outcome of the bet. Anybody willing to take a bet that my keyboard is going to evolve radically or disappear altogether in my lifetime?

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago

Mice work well. Voice recognition works well for me. I still use the keyboard for most real work. Similarly, I think we will see some degree of brain reading, but at least the first generation or two won't replace other input methods.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

I'm sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning with...an iPad. My keyboard is still at the office, but I don't use it as much as I used to.

deleted 9y ago
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hesdeadjim 9y ago

I'm more on your side than not when it comes to these bombastic claims. That said I think consumer level mind interfaces will happen, and be useful, but much more so as a way to augment traditional input. It's a bit boring to think about, but given some of the research that has been able to reconstruct a (poor) image from brain activity, I could imagine using something like that to open applications by imagining their icon. Continue down this line of thinking and it is entirely possible that we will begin to construct an entirely new symbolic language to interact with these interfaces. I mean if a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe it's more effective path to follow than obsessing over perfect speech recognition.

melling 9y ago

How old are you? It’s really not that hard to imagine the keyboard being replaced by one, or a combination, of technologies in the next decade or two. Voice has gotten dramatically better in the past few years. Another decade? There are also gesture technologies: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 Anyway, if you’ve got 3 or 4 decades of life, you still think we won’t have sufficient advances to replace the keyboard?

jodrellblank 9y ago
I can't imagine what a replacement would look or behave like. You can replace your keyboard with almost anything that proxies human to computer, but nothing else is the same or as capable. The radar video is impressive (as were Leap Motion videos, which didn't live up to the hype), and sure it makes sense for extending a watch or phone, but the problem with autocorrect and voice recognition and predictive keyboards and spell checkers is much of the time, I'm not writing clear, coherent, English sentences. Sufficient advances to write foreign words and jargon and deliberate misspellings and usernames and hostnames and slang and quotes which are deliberately not spelled normally? A lot of the claims about "you'll just think it" hide the reality - e.g. when I try to speak a password and I can't, because it's just a pattern of motion (and you can't escape this overall problem by saying you won't need passwords in the future). Human hands are dextrous and sensitive, almost no other body parts are anything like as much - voice is laborious and prone to problems of pronunciation and tiredness and background noise and homonyms, anything else isn't going to come close until you can have brain surgery implants - and even then a) no thanks and b) I bet that still underestimates the complexity of reading clear intent.

hedning 9y ago

If sub-vocal recognition [1] (together with suggestions) gets as good as voice recognition I think we could finally have a viable alternative to the keyboard. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition

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