Why voice is not the user interface of the future
In the last few months, various prominent figures in big tech have claimed that voice is the user interface of the future. It’s an interesting revival of voice interaction, which already fell flat on its face in the late 2010s during the era of voice assistants. Despite that failure, the idea is back, and I’m here to tell you why voice is not the user interface of the future. Let’s start with why I’m so peeved about this. I almost wrote this blog post back in October, when David Weston, a VP at Microsoft, claimed that “the world of mousing around and keyboarding around and typing will feel as alien as it does to Gen Z to use DOS.” This was part of the unveiling of the Microsoft Windows 2030 Vision, and he also suggested that we will do “more talking to our computers.” I have some strong feelings about Microsoft, Windows, and their vision for the future, but I won’t go into those to avoid getting derailed. At the time, I shrugged it off as one of those things people just say on the internet or a marketing gimmick. ...