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To: Clappy who wrote (1581)	1/29/2001 10:30:39 AM
From: abuelita	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104191

Speech Recognition-The Quiet Revolution Scientist turned venture capitalist Greg Blonder noted recently that exponential trends start slowly and remain disarmingly out of sight. Yet, unlike linear trends, exponentials build strength relentlessly until they've grown too large to ignore. By the time most folks realize it, whole industries have changed and whole cultures have fallen. And so it is with speech recognition technology. According to Ray Kurzweil, author of the provocative and fascinating book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, the use of speech recognition in the global economy is growing exponentially. He reckons it is now doubling every year. Like Blonder, Kurzweil notes that people don't notice exponential growth when the numbers are below the radar screen. But then, suddenly, growth erupts. Many people thought the Internet came out of "nowhere," but astute futurists like Kurzweil had correctly seen the powerful exponential growth of this world-changing technology well before it became the Big Thing. Kurzweil was talking about the explosive growth in the Internet back in the 1980s! According to Kurzweil, the use of speech recognition with computers, mobile phones and other technology is close to taking off. Through much of the 1990s, there were only tens of thousands of users. But now we are up to millions of users. Kurzweil notes that the quality of speech recognition technology continues to improve as chip processing power speeds up (we are now at 1.4 gigahertz-next year we will be at 3 gigahertz). He should know-he is one of the pioneers of voice recognition technology. Recently, we began using software that was initially written by Kurzweil called Dragon Naturally Speaking 5. Much to our surprise, the software was easy to use and accurate (not 100%, but close). We suspect in the not-too-distant future millions of more people around the world will begin using speech recognition software. Indeed, Microsoft is beta testing speech recognition technology with its next version of Office software. The implications of speech recognition technology for computing (and communications) are huge. Think about all the folks overseas who have difficulty using a conventional keyboard (how do you fit the thousands of Chinese characters on a keyboard anyway?). Furthermore, think about all those folks who don't know how to type well, but are able to speak effectively. And then there are the rest of us, searching for ways to become ever more proficient using computers (wouldn't it be nice to talk to our computers, instead of swearing at them most of the time?). We believe speech recognition will be a big factor in driving global PC penetration much higher in coming years. Currently, PC penetration globally is around 10 percent. We suspect that once speech recognition technology goes prime time, global PC penetration will rise sharply. All those stories you have read about the death of PCs will seem like a distant memory when voice recognition goes prime time. Speech recognition technology has been a quiet revolution so far, but not for long. We advise folks to keep their eyes (and ears) open in coming months. Steve Waite and Max Jacobs