The View from Nowhere

It’s fun saying that Bill Gates is wrong.  It’s fun because 1) it doesn’t matter what I say because the Bill G magic isn’t about being right or wrong its about having 90% of the OS market share so that gives me the freedom to say anything risk-free 2) he’s really, really rich and part of me likes lashing out at that in jealousy.  But Bill is still wrong.

On Feb 21, Bill told students at Carnegie Mellon University that keyboards would be less important in computing’s future.  I agree with this, but Bill went on to say that speech will replace keyboards, and this I think is inaccurate.  What strikes me is how obviously inaccurate this is.  Look at how people work right now.  Many workplaces are tightly packed with cubicles or even rows of seated computer workers.  This works out for the most part, because people can sit and quietly type away without bothering anyone else.  In call centers, the keyboard is used for multi-tasking, allowing agents to talk to one customer while chatting with several others via keyboard.  With cell phones, people can txt people in loud environments when they could not otherwise be heard or in social situations where it would be impolite to have a vocal conversation.  The increasingly personal nature of technology makes it more appealing to make more and more computer use private and unspoken, not the other way.  Can you imagine a crowded bus where everyone is barking orders at their phones?  “Next screen, up, up, up, left, down, close window, place call…”  It is hard enough when people are talking loudly to other people let alone machines.  Bill is right, keyboards are limited and clunky but they are the best thing going right now and speech is not the successor.