With the Klingons in hot pursuit, Captain James Kirk whipped out his communicator and issued voice instructions. As the Klingons moved within striking distance, Kirk calmly said, "Scotty, beam me up."rnBefore the Klingons could vaporize the prudent captain, Kirk flickered, turned into little sparkles, and materialized in the U.S.S. Enterprise starship's transporter room. Who had time to futz with a doll-house-sized keyboard while a Klingon war party was advancing with malice?rnWhat's not to like about talking to a mobile device or having voice communication available within any computing session or application? After watching a couple of Star Trek episodes in 1968, I knew that voice interaction was the Spock-logical way to interact with computers. Touch was not what I wanted to do. Voice was easy, convenient, and faster than pawing keys and performing gestures, and it was conversational. The problem was that in 1968, there were mainframes and no BlackBerries other than fruit, no Apples other than Beatle tunes, and no Googles other than an arcane math term.
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