ErikJonker

Although technology develops at high speed, it always takes time to reach the plateau of productivity. The level it really starts working and having impact. I am under the impression we are close to that moment with speech recognition. Our traditional ways of input are keyboard and mouse. The introduction of the tablet and smartphone has added touch. Touch is making speech recognition more important. It's really useful in overcoming the limitations of a touch interface. You can roughly distinguish in two types of voice recognition in my view. The first one is dictation or text entry. The second one is giving commands or executing searches. Especially in the second category developments are going fast. Apple was the first with Siri quickly followed by Google/android with their efforts. For example in voice search on both iOS and android. The recent MotoX phone by Motorola/Google is build around speech recognition. It's constantly listening to your voice and reacting to commands

Google is making no secret about it. It wants to know everything there is to know about us. With that knowledge it wants to deliver services to us fully customized to our needs. Together with advertising tailored to us personally. Examples can be found in search (which is different for each person logged in), maps (which will be personalised), advertisements in many products etc. Also Google Now, although still a bit clumsy, tries to anticipate what we would want or buy. There is no doubt in my mind that Google will be able to improve this to make this all a comfortable and friendly experience. But that's also the scary part. I can imagine a scenario where Google only proposes friends who are more or less like me. The same could happen in product offerings/advertisements which could become a bit the same. In the end we could end up in a fuzzy, comfortable environment but without the necessary stimuli which are important in life, which inspire creativity and activities. Google is