You see, I really blame capitalism itself. In this particular instance, voice recognition technology for writers, it is the system that has failed. Yes, competition is a splendid thing. And there has been quite a bit of the latter in this field. And where has it gotten us?  ”Us” being disabled writers. The technology has advanced splendidly. The market narrowly. Oh, it’s a boring story, but I seem to be specializing in boring stories these days. So bear with me, if you wish, or don’t if you don’t.

Thing is, at its best, Windows supported the finest speech recognition system ever. Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Oh, it was a splendid thing. Dragon required that the user correct errors within the system. Which may sound like a drag but wasn’t, because the software kept learning and learning. And learned everything. What Paul sounds like with a cold. What Paul sounds like when he’s pissed off at Jane. Day by day, hour by hour, the recognition speed improved. The recognition itself improved. 

Of course, there was a problem for someone with Apple computers. But for a while, Dragon managed an Apple version. And I will admit that it was never as good. But it was close enough. Above all, it learned. Same idea. You made a mistake, something didn’t get recognized, you corrected it in the system. All kinds of errors. Even very fine points. Like dictating “while I take my oars and row, bots plague my computer.” Which Dragon would easily render as “while I take my oars and robots plague my computer.” And the user would highlight this understandable error, correct it either way, and damned if the software wouldn’t get it “right,” whichever way you wanted it.

Until voice-to-text became a generalized to technology. Like Apple’s Siri. Alexa. Everything. And while the overall efficacy kept improving, the narrow market for disabled writers got left behind somewhere. Maybe in Milpitas. Or Stockton. But effectively gone. But remains is Apple Text. Apple Speak, maybe. And if I can’t remember the name of the product, this is at least partly because it isn’t a product. It’s just a function. It’s something you reset in the utilities under “keyboard.” And, no, you don’t train it. And, no, it doesn’t learn. And I suspect that it’s just fine for writing memos. But not for writing books. And to my knowledge, this is where the story ends. At least it’s where Apple users’ stories end. And tomorrow and tomorrow.

And moving right along, wish as well with the Berkeley Rep this afternoon. At its best, Berkeley has one of the finest regional theater companies in the US. And this includes its own productions and frequent imports. POTUS is on today. Political satire. Stay tuned.