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Comment by KorematsuFred | Hacker News Reader

Very unlikely I will ever talk to my computer irrespective of how good the speed technology gets. If I have to talk to my computer how will I work in crowded places ? How does it work ?

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Even at home without any risk of disturbing coworkers, it would have to be extremely intuitive to offer any speed advantage.

I can open Microsoft Word faster than I can say "open microsoft word". It would have to be smart enough to short circuit the entire process of doing something useful with Word.

You're not thinking creatively enough. Part of the technology would be to disable any other way of opening Word.

If you had two mics, you could probably work out a filter that captures audio roughly 'in front of the laptop' which would probably work well enough. But I think the wins are going to be in places where you don't normally have a computer, where a mouse and keyboard aren't natural companions to the task at hand. Yes, some environments will be noisy enough that speaking is a bad modality, but not all of them.

I do not see the advantage of talking to computer. I can see the advantage of talking to my Google mini in my bathroom while I am showering. I see the advantage of asking my car to change music while driving. But literally zero advantages of talking to my laptop. My hands can move lot faster than my mouth. I can set shortcuts that help me do things lot faster than the whole pain of talking to the computer.

No, the point is that you'd be annoying the people around you if you were talking to your computer the whole time.

That is a lot of reading into the question that was actually asked: "how does it work?"

Sorry I was not clear. The problem here is that I am annoying other people and I am getting annoyed by other people around me. Imagine saying "Hey Computer, what is my credit card bill for this year", "Hey Computer, Open word",

Shades of that asshole in line at Starbucks holding conference call over a bluetooth headset.

In a croweded place the noise has to be cancelled or speech recognition application must learn to recognise with noise in input audio.

I think the real problem is social, no one wants to hear you talking at your computer in a coffee shop.

That would quickly change if people actually wanted to do it though. Social norms are just unwritten agreements - if enough people decide to dictate their novels and blog posts in coffeeshops then the default will quickly change so talking is acceptable.

I think you underestimate the resistance. The problem isn't just that people don't want to do it, it's also that people don't want other people to do it because it's annoying.

It might pass in a coffee shop, it probably won't in an airplane, it will almost certainly never pass in a library. People will try it regardless of the appropriateness of the location, because some people aren't aware or are assholes, and as a result the entire technology will get a bad rap. See google glass as an example.

People talk to each other all the time in coffee shops. If talking to your computer becomes as natural as talking to a friend, why won't it be acceptable in a shop?

People talk to each other all the time in airplanes too, and even libraries, but it turns out that people are both more understanding of people talking to other humans currently present (rather than say on a cell phone) and people are better at talking to other humans currently present respectfully than they are at talking to devices (or at least people via devices, but I think we can extrapolate).

I agree if it was already the social norm it wouldn't be a problem (same with Google glass), but it turns out that the technology being ready isn't always enough to make the social norms change.

I think part of the issue is that we're pretty good at focusing and filtering. If we're trying, we can focus on a single voice when the room is noisy. The computer doesn't know which to choose and all voices seem equally important.

I've often asked Google assistant in packed bars and it works great.

Wear some sort of sound containing bubble around your head, fits in nicely with the whole pandemic thing :)

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stenomask&ia=images&iax=images

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