Voice Recognition

Last week we discussed Google's entry into voice recognition. The NY Times Columnist, John Markoff, had this to say:

Everyone agrees that in mobile applications, speech is the obvious user interface. Whether it’s on a BlackBerry, an Android phone or an iPhone, typing will always be error-prone and frustrating.
If one company makes a major breakthrough in voice, it is potentially a major threat to its rivals, because a “speech interface” could potentially allow one company to simply take over a handheld device developed by another company.

For some time we seem to have been stuck at the stage where speech recognition works, but just sort of. Perhaps we are at a moment like the one when A.T.M.’s were first introduced. At first most people said they preferred interacting with a human bank teller. Then, overnight it seemed, everyone realized that the bank teller relationship wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Now most of us never set foot inside a bank. How long before people find that it is more efficient to deal with a robot on the phone than a human?