[ExI] Voice operated computers

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> On 02/06/2011 02:42 PM, Tom Nowell wrote:
>>
>> Spike wrote: " No, I don't think voice operated computers will ever appear
>> in general use. Think about it. What happens when you get a group of people
>> all shouting at their handheld computers? It's bad enough listening to other
>> people's mobile phone conversations."
>
> Subvocalization is your friend.  What I don't want is voice output.  Voice
> and for that matter, video, is notoriously linear and only capable of so
> much playback speed increase while remaining comprehensible.  I am very sad
> that it is becoming quite popular to make video instead of using text for
> more and more information transfer.  It is not amenable to search, indexing
> or quick scanning.  A step backwards in my view.  I read a LOT faster than I
> process speech.

Bad video is indeed not your friend. However, there are times when
video conveys a lot more information than you could get from text. For
example, I made some videos showing how to solve very large Rubik's
cubes quickly. I don't think I could have done nearly as good a job at
that without the video.

My friends at Orabrush are extremely happy with their video marketing,
since it turned them from a complete flop to a great success. That
simply could not have happened as quickly or as well without video.

Video of talking heads saying nothing, I can sure do without that. And
enough of teenagers doing stupid and dangerous stuff. The medium must
match the message. Without television, JFK and Ronald Regan would
never have been elected. Without the Internet Ron Paul would have been
just another ignored third party candidate. Using the right medium in
the right way is critical.

As we start to see more and more 3D being used, you can be sure that a
lot of it will be used badly (e.g. The Last Airbender). But with
Avatar, we see that it can be used to great effect when you go all the
way.

In the future, we will have projection on the retinas, which should
not be much different than 3D video in it's usage, it's basically a
new kind of monitor. Head's up displays in cars should become more
popular sometime in the next few years. Night vision is just too
effective to not have it in some cars some time. But if it's used to
project video and other distracting things, then it will be very bad.

The next really different medium IMHO is haptics. It seems fairly
clear to me that the technology will be first driven by teledildonics
(after all who first commonly put video on the web). But who will be
the first presidential candidate to be elected (or gain notoriety)
because they make creative use of a haptic interface. It gives a whole
new meaning to "I feel your pain"... :-)

-Kelly