Dallas on Tuesday – Input

02007-01-23 | Computer, Technology, Touring | 0 comments

Voice-input for computers a la Startrek – yawn. Why would I want everyone in the control-room to hear that I am turning down the bass… Or I am sitting in a pubic space like a Wi-Fi cafe and people can hear my commands. Voice-recognition is great for blind people or people missing one or more limbs, but otherwise un-interesting, I think. Good for quick notes though. Note to self: the Legal Grounds cafe near the Lakewood Theater is frequented by more borgs (people wearing bluetooth headsets) than any other place I have ever been in.

Handwriting-recognition – double yawn. I can type much faster than I can write and that goes double for anyone in their twenties or thirties. I thought Palm Pilots with Graffiti were cool in the nineties, but since switching to a Treo 650 a couple of years ago I haven’t used a stylus and prefer the keyboard.

No, the interaction I want with a computer is gesture-based. My fingers are the best pointing device. I use my fingers much more than I would use, say, a pen or my voice. Take my studio for example. I have a two-screen set-up and when I am using ProTools the screens have so much going on that quite often I can’t find the cursor right away. Is it on the right screen or did I leave it on the left screen? I search and wiggle the mouse… when all I should have to do is touch the screen and that’s where the mouse is. I think once we have multi-touch screens we will wonder how long we made without them. Children will ask how did you do without multi-touch the same way I asked my parents how they got by using a hand-pump to draw water from a well. How did you take a bath? We went to the well with a bucket, several times, and then heated water on a wood-stove…

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