From Capitan Kirk's orders to his Enterprise through Luke Skywalker talking with his R2-D2, sci-fi authors have long recognized voice search as optimal way to communicate with software. However, since the invention of printing press in 15th century, it was the text that remained prevalent in storing information. Consumer technology advancement with the arrival of widely accessible personal devices and mobile internet access made software producers rethink their attitude towards voice search.
First voice recognition software prototypes were presented in 1950s and 60s by Bell Laboratories and IBM, respectively. They could recognize several pre-programmed words (e.g. 10-15) and were later developed, primarily in the US for military purposes. Voice recognition was later used in the 90s to introduce voice-activated menus on helpdesk hotlines. It was Google in 2000s to widely introduce voice search with its search service and other large tech players following, predominantly Apple with Siri and Microsoft with Cortana. Those services were growingly complex and supporting increasing number of user requests.
So how long until we won't need to type anymore? Hard to say. Explosion of convenient and accessible voice recognition services came with advancements in technology and software engineering (i.e. machine learning applications). It is tempting to forecast that in matter of years we will be able to use all our devices using voice commands. However, it might also be the "last mile" that is the toughest to complete. Constant watchout for voice commands means monitoring via microphones raising serious privacy concerns. Also, data collected through the network of monitoring devices might consider valuable intelligence information and therefore needs to be properly protected.
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