The Voice Is Mightier Than The Pen
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If that phrase doesn’t ring any bells for you, don’t worry. Google seems to say it’s the first time it’s been said. On the other hand, some may feel they recognize it from somewhere. They may be remembering that Robert Mitchell in September this year took the diametrically opposite position with his article, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Voice.
The reason for this difference of viewpoint is that Robert Mitchell was talking particularly about Desktop PCs and what input devices might work most effectively for them. In comparing voice-control and pen technology, Mitchell quoted Don Norman of the Nielsen Norman Group as follows, “As usage needs and technology changes, however, one of these technologies is more likely to gain ground as a viable alternative“. Perhaps that article comes to the right conclusions about Desktop PCs, but perhaps the answers are different if we consider mobile devices.
The same Don Norman is also cited in a more recent item, The phone of the future, from the Economist Print Edition. Norman says, “The cellphone is not a telephone. It is a-I don’t know what it is. A communications device? A tool I carry in my pocket?” Don Norman was the author in 1998 of “The Invisible Computer“, a book that somewhat prophetically predicted that computers would eventually be so integrated into everyday items that they would vanish.
The mobile devices that will be leading the growth of the Mobile Web are clearly cellphones. The very restricted screen size of cellphones and the difficulty of entering data bring new challenges. Two recent news items point to the coming conflict as to whether the voice or the pen will prove to be the viable alternative.
YellowPages.com has now added extra functionality to its service by allowing users to send a Local Search text message to their cellphone. Sounds a little same-old, same-old to me.
Contrast this with the acquisition of MobileVoiceControl by Nuance. Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for business and consumers. MobileVoiceControl provides a speech-enabled service that allows consumers to easily dictate and send email or text messages, dial a contact, create calendar entries, and search Web content entirely with their voice. Just think what that combination can do for your cellphone.
So which will prove to be mightier for mobile devices, the Pen or the Voice? Time will tell, but the answer seems clear.
Tags: Mobile, Cellphone, voice
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