Holiday reflections

Posted by Hugh
Dec 25, 2014 at 06:18 PM

Season’s greetings to all, but in particular to jaslar, Steve Z. and Paul Korm above.

I agree that there appear to be no great exciting seismic shifts in software on the horizon (although the force of the onward March of Markdown is in some ways quite remarkable - not particularly corporate in origin, not even especially mercantile in motivation, but apparently highly effective in making converts). Seen in the wider sweep, the recent past in terms of utility also seems unrevolutionary: Windows 8, though I probably use it too seldom to judge, seems to me to represent change for the sake of change, and Yosemite not to be a huge step forward.

Personally, I’ve recently taken more of an interest in how I write, not just in how I structure what I write (the motivation for my original interest in this forum). It seems to me that dictation to a Windows or Mac machine and voice-to-text are significantly less error-prone and much easier to use than they were, whether with Nuance’s products or the Windows or Mac dictation features. Although users still often give the software-providers a hard time, my impression is that the complaints are fewer, and the praise more frequent; such are the improvements that have been made, it’s hard to recall quite how frustrating using such software was, ten or fifteen years ago.

But because I’ve always believed - from experience long ago in churning out many thousands of words a week at work - that ideas forming words should best pass through the fingers and a pen or pencil in order to reach the page, and have this year had that prejudice semi-supported by brain research (see, for example, if you haven’t already http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?_r=0), I’ve long hoped that handwriting recognition would move forward as quickly as voice recognition. But on my recent experience - no such luck. (I could - and do - handwrite and then dictate.)

Next year perhaps.