How Siri won’t mean a damn thing about how I use my phone
Since nobody asked, here is what I think of this Siri-business: it’s meaningless.
I have never understood our fascination with computer voice commands. I think it’s all that Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey we were brought up with that somehow convinced us a talking computer would be kind of neat.
But it’s not. Really, it isn’t. The only reason HAL and Majel Barrett were “cool” was because they were computers that could read the script. And by that I mean they knew when they were spoken to, and the rest of the time they just shut up. And no matter how much the human subject was mumbling, they’d never return a wrong search result or simply go, “Um, say that again?”
In practical situations, however, I find it very hard to come up with a situation where voice commands would actually work like they’re supposed to — even less, situations where the alternative of just writing shit down or one-touch dialing someone isn’t much, much easier.
You’re in a crowded street trying to tell your phone to remind it to call your wife later? Good luck. You’re on a bus or in a subway trying to ask your phone where to go for lunch? People with hands-free phone headsets look creepy enough as it is, talking into thin air — imagine it when they start commanding their “invisible friend” around.
I’m all for new technology. But this voice recognition shit is bunk. In a real-world situation, no matter how advanced the technology is, it’s still just a round-about way of doing things. It’s something you’ll pull out at a party to show your friends how “cool” it is, but once that thing starts making appointments every time you fart, you’ll be back to just typing a date into your calendar.
Not because you’re techno-conservative. Because it works every time.
