“Computer…”

Monday, 10 October 2011

When I first heard about Siri, the new personal assistant technology built into the new iPhone 4S, my immediate reaction was, “Oh no, not again.”

People have been trying to put voice recognition and voice command into computers for years, but despite massive advances in the quality of these systems, and their ability to understand reliably a variety of accents and speech patterns – you no longer have. to. talk. like. a. robot. – they haven’t surpassed the keyboard as the primary means of communicating with the PC. Why? Well, I think it’s largely because people don’t like looking and sounding like a total dick, frankly.

Take a look at this introduction video. OK, I buy the guy talking to Siri in the car. He’s by himself. Fine. But the guy jogging? Can you imagine jogging next to this guy? Would you be thinking anything other than, “What a wanker!”

Mind you, I suppose that’s exactly what we used to think about people talking loudly on their cellphones before they became ubiquitous.

Perhaps this is just another somewhat awkward step forward. We’ll feel a bit like dickheads to begin with, but soon, when everyone is doing it, the dickhead factor will disappear and we’ll wonder how we ever lived without it.