When we last left this broadening subject of handwriting, cursive, and moveable type, I was threatening to sing the praises of speech-to-text programs. To me, these seem like the summit of getting thoughts committed to what passes for paper these days.
A common thread in humanity’s tapestry is that we all walk around with so much going on in our heads, and no real chance to get it out stream-of-consciousness style without missing a word — until we start talking to each other. I don’t care what your English teacher told you — talking turns to writing quite easily; all it takes is a willingness to follow enough of the rules, and to record it all in a readable fashion.
But, alas! That suggests that linear thinking is not only possible, but that it’s easy and everyone else is already doing it. While that’s (usually) not true, simply thinking out loud can get you pretty far down the road in a lot of mental vehicles. You just have to record it all somehow. And if your end goal is to have the words typed out, why not skip the the voice recorder and go the speech-to-text route?
Communication Breakdown
Some programs are better than others, but you get back what you put into them — especially with the higher-end, super-trainable kind like Dragon Dictation. If you’ve listened to me on the Podcast, you might understand how difficult it could be for a robot to understand the nuances of my speech 100% of the time.
While this is not meant to be an ad for any particular service or software package, there have been days where cursive dealing dragons
