Every tv-show with any amount of tech that I watched when I was a kid in the 90s featured a computer that talked and could be talked to. Plenty of people hoping

Every tv-show with any amount of tech that I watched when I was a kid in the 90s featured a computer that talked and could be talked to. Plenty of people hoping this will become a reality, even if only for languages using letters (ie. not Chinese). Any complex task that is somehow generic can easily be done with voice control and makes the UI needed for simpler tasks to be more concise and less bloated. For instance setting the alarm clock. You could scroll through your apps looking for the clock app. Open it (ie. wait for it to load), then navigate to the alarm clock tab, create a new alarm, set the correct time and hit save. (on my nokia phone this is actually faster than saying saying the word "alarm", but my ipod touch is slow as hell) On a computer with a keyboard a lot of this can be sped up because I can search for the application from the keyboard, I can tab through fields and use shortcuts to do things (like ctrl-n for new). But my mum can never remember any shortcuts, and she can't type very fast. And if you think that the new generation is any better...then have a look at anyone studying in the human sciences department...most of them have trouble enough using word. My point is, if something doesn't require perfect speech recognition, is a complex yet generic task...then voice control seems like a very good solution.