Telling my computer what to type: David Pogue's December 2, 2004 column in the New York Times praises the new edition of Dragon Naturally Speaking, a software program that turns spoken language into text for its accuracy. He also praises the company for spending the past two years for actually working to make the software function better rather than simply adding more bells and whistles.

That's good, but he also expressed surprise and some dismay about the fact that the number of speech to text applications had diminished and little work seems to be going on in this area, which caused me to wonder about the situation as well. Why aren't more people interested in speech to text programs?

Maybe most people are like me. I simply have no interest in such a program. I don't want to talk aloud to my computer.

I can readily imagine situations where this software, however, might be particularly useful, and I am a bit surprised more hasn't been done with it. Business settings come immediately to mind. The real advantage, other than for people who for any variety of reasons simply cannot type, is to free up the user's hands for other tasks. Thus I suspect that this sort of multi-tasking must simply be beyond the capacity of most of us.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, when every manager (mostly males) had a secretary (almost always female) who would take the boss's dictation. Every letter, every memo, nearly every note, required two people to produce it. The secretary would be called into the boss's office where the boss would speak the letter to the secretary, who would in turn form the message into something that could be understood by its intended recipient. Think of the energy that required, and the time.

Computers have cut those energy costs and the time needed to produce that sort of communication down significantly. In addition, now the boss, who pressumably knows her or his submect matter much better than a secretary might be expected to, is responsible for the accuracy of the transmission of information.

So why isn't the modern manager talking to his computer instead of typing the information in? He/she had no problem speaking to a secretary in the good old days. Maybe because the only time we really feel comfortable speaking to a machine is when we curse it for misbehaving? I do like to seem some response in a person's face when I talk to them. (Think about the lectures given to teenage daughters and the blank stares they use to respond with—it's maddening.)

Quote of the day: "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services said during his resignation speech: Thanks, Tommy, and be sure to remind the kids that burning the house down only requires them to get the gas can out of the garage and use the matches in the kitchen drawer! Gee, why haven't they thought of that already?