Yes, I do work in IT, and today has seen me making something of an experimental purchase. I have been writing several very large reports over the last few days, and I have become very bored with typing. I tried voice recognition software about five years ago, when the state-of-the-art was really very poor. I remember having to say each word out loud individually, and sounding like some kind of spastic robot. It wasn't just a question of being difficult to work the application it actually made it difficult to work my brain. (Many amongst you would say that was true anyway...) However, I do remember after a particularly long afternoon talking about general ledger systems for banks, that my eyeballs were just about rattling in their sockets trying to maintain my concentration.
Still, no fool like an old fool, and I decided that I would try it again. I bought a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8.0 from Amazon in the UK, as I didn't think the Swiss French version would be particularly helpful to a native English Speaker. Perhaps I could have just have put on an outrageous accent and hoped for the best. (God alone knows, it's what I do when I speak French...) I installed it on my system about two hours ago, and read it a few sample texts, including a chapter of “2001 A Space Odyssey,” which I found somehow obscurely reassuring, if only because HAL 9000 seems to be a very long way away, and so dunces like me might keep their job for a little while yet.
Lo and behold! The damned thing works, and I have even taught it to spell SAP, ABAP, BAPIs and Hamish in double quick time. I know I should be less impressed, after all it's only software and in theory I know how it works. However, I have to admit I am genuinely stunned, because this is such a major advance in how I deal with computers. (No, this is not a paid advertising section from ScanSoft, and if it were, it is hard to imagine I would make much money from it, given my readership.) In effect, this means that I can now do my job with my feet on my desk, talking out loud, and saying whatever comes into my head. That's got to be a major advance.
In case you're wondering, yes, this article has been dictated using the software. So far I've only had to make about two or three major corrections to what has been written. The only interesting thing I have noticed, is that the software is remarkably shy of profanity and other swearing, seeking desperately to substitute words that are similar sounding but not rude.
Still, given the potential for the litigation and other disasters by sending incredibly rude letters to your clients I suppose that's a good thing. One of my favourite stories of such disasters, was one of the major retail banks in the UK who sent a letter for a new offer to all their high net worth individuals. As is usual with these mailshots, a form letter was merged with a database, which means that all the relevant fields like name and address and so on are held within the rest of the text. Unfortunately when the letter was being developed the programmer who was building it forgot to replace the placeholder text for the greeting. What was the end result? The mailshot went to about 10,000 people, with the following unforgettable first line:
"Dear Rich Bastard."
Personally, I would have framed it and put up in the lavatory, as final recognition of the fact that I had arrived in society. Maybe not everyone would have been as pleased however.
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