Orson Scott Card made subvocal interfaces sound interesting in Speaker for the Dead (+ other post Ender's Game books). In the books, Ender uses subvocalization to talk to a sentient computer, which allows him to communicate privately. It also affords him a bit of laziness, as he doesn't have to fully express the words.
Now subvocalization looks like it's closer to being a real interface. What I find most compelling about it is that it could potentially allow for the richness of a user interface based on speech, but without the annoying side effect of having to listen to people talk to their computers (it's bad enough having to hear your co-workers talking on the phone). The actual research sounds pretty far off from being practical, though, as the lexicon it recognizes is rather small.
- Yahoo! News - NASA hears words not yet spoken
(via boingboing)
Posted by kwc at March 17, 2004 07:48 PM