Do You Want More Voice Recognition?

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, speech recognition is about to hit the big time. Of course, pundits have been saying this for years. Bill Gates has touted the technology for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that it has never worked well. I'll never forget the disastrous Comdex demo I once attended when a vendor tried desperately to make his voice-recognition software recognize his voice (it never did).

Personally, I don't want to talk to machines, and I certainly don't want to listen to other people talking to them (all the cell-phone gabbing is quite enough, thank you). Why would I want to say, "Menu, file, open, Regional Sales Forecast 2008," when I could accomplish the same thing with two quick clicks of the mouse?

Admittedly, there's value in voice recognition for situations when your hands are otherwise occupied, like operating a motor vehicle. I think all cell phones should offer voice-dialing capabilities so people aren't punching numbers when they should be looking at the road. Same goes for navigation systems; hopefully the new voice-operated GPS models will catch on and the feature will become standard.

What do you think? Any desire to dictate documents into Word rather than type them? Are there times when you wish a computer or device could respond to your vocal commands? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the present and future of voice recognition. Personally, I don't think it'll ever catch on. But, then, I said the same thing about Bluetooth.