Voice Recognition Software – A Personal Perspective
by Fritz Stork

If you know much about computer software then you know that almost any program improves dramatically over a very short period time.  I have worked with clients from just about every type of profession using Dragon NaturallySpeaking^® over the last 4 years and rarely have I seen such a dramatic improvement in technology as I have with the speed and accuracy that are now available with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8.  When I came on board, I was selling Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 4.0 so I have had a great opportunity to see many changes over the last four years.  I can honestly say that we are now at the point where most people have been waiting for voice recognition software to be for decades now.  If you ever imagined yourself speaking to your computer and composing documents, letters, faxes and e-mails all by voice without ever touching the keyboard or mouse then your day has arrived!  Not only have there been tremendous improvements in the software for voice recognition technology, but of course over the last few years computers have become faster and more powerful than ever before.  The advances in hardware technology using faster processors and utilizing much more RAM memory than ever before combined with software improvements in voice technology have resulted in voice recognition software that we can depend on for just about any type of document we need to create.

Several years ago, I was selling antivirus and security software both to individual users as well as businesses, government agencies and large universities.  Selling this type of software was much like selling insurance.  It was something you had to have, but it was not much fun to show off.  This is not the case with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8.0  I get the opportunity to demonstrate this program frequently each week to potential clients and showing the software off to them never gets old.  Sometimes I here grown adults giggle with glee when they see me compose an e-mail using nothing but voice or create a lengthy document in a fraction of the time it takes to do so manually.  My favorite experience is to take a lengthy form that a potential client has to fill out frequently and repetitively and creative a shortcut verbal command that will bring the template of that form up and then fill that form in using nothing but voice at speeds of up to 160 words per minute with up to 99% accuracy.  When most prospective clients see this for themselves about 75% start asking how soon we can ship this product to them and most of the remaining usually would like a quote on this product for use in their place of business.

Simply put, this is a software application that anyone can use but just to give you a brief overview, here are the types of clients for whom the software is particularly helpful:

• Physicians creating lengthy medical reports
• Attorneys preparing documents for court cases
• Anyone with repetitive strain injuries or carpal tunnel syndrome
• Anyone with a disability who cannot use keyboard and mouse
• Students creating school reports and term papers
• Authors writing books
• Government workers preparing lengthy paperwork
• Police Officers and Detectives writing incident reports
• Salespeople who need to log customer activities
• Copywriters writing Web text or copy for print advertisements
• Generally, anyone who uses a PC and wants to create documentation faster and easier than ever before

Do you remember back in the 1980s when cell phones were a sign of wealth and privilege yet today almost everyone uses a cell phone daily?  Now we wonder how we communicated so easily and stayed in touch with friends, family and business contacts without our cell phones.  I truly believe that experience will be the same with voice recognition technology.  I believe we are only a few short years away from mainstream use of voice recognition in our daily lives.  Perhaps as we transition,  we will still keep our old keyboard and mouse around somewhere in a box in our closet just for that feeling of security in case we think we need to use these devices again, but as time goes on I think these items will become relics of the PC past and I see a great day in the near future of a large flat screen monitor with nothing attached except a small lightweight PC and a microphone to perform all of our computer operations from printing, to e-mailing, to faxing and composing text.

Maybe one day we will have our grandchildren over and when talking about the past as grandparents frequently do, we will take them to the closet with the keyboard and mouse, wipe off the dust and show them how we used to input information into our computers.  We will tell the sad stories of how we had to bend our hands and wrists into a certain position for eight hours a day as we sat at a workstation and did our work.  Our grandchildren will probably look at us a little bit strangely and wonder how and why we used to do things this way.  We will simply explain to them that this was the best technology we had at the time and we did the best we could with what we had.  This will be the modern-day version of the "I had to walk 8 miles in the snow to get to school each morning" type of story. When the grandchildren get tired of hearing the story, I'm sure they will politely excuse themselves and go dictate a few e-mails to some of their closest friends.

©2005 21^st Century Eloquence