One can imagine them dictating, if speech recognition software is sufficiently good. This doesn't work for code (or, perhaps, it doesn't work for the programmin

One can imagine them dictating, if speech recognition software is sufficiently good. This doesn't work for code (or, perhaps, it doesn't work for the programming languages we have now---a programming language with syntax designed to be spoken, not typed, would be very interesting) and it seems it doesn't work for writing fiction, as I think I recall Charlie Stross discovering (can't find the blog posts now, though http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writing-experiment-i-plan-to.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/03/a-writin... discusses the problem). For day-to-day communication, though, the stylistic differences between dictated and typed prose are probably not important. Moreover, this might yield a small efficiency win over both text communication as is (email, IM) and the telephone: dictated text would be as fast to produce as spoken communication (I can talk much faster than I can type, and I get the feeling that's true in general), while remaining as fast to read and as easy to edit as text. I'm not sure this win would be very big, though; for me, at least, the bulk of the time I spend on writing is spent figuring out how to phrase things. Jackalope's comment, though, indicates that people are starting to see noticeable improvements in efficiency---the "how did I ever live without this" feeling. Perhaps they find speech more natural than typing, and spend less time agonizing over how to express themselves? This scenario depresses me somewhat, as I have an inordinate and perhaps irrational fondness for slower, more considered forms of expression. I find my prose is more dense and pointed when I hand-write than when I type, which I prefer (though my superabundant laziness combined with the ease of editing on a computer mean that I almost always type).