Tonight I’m trying out some software. This software is called Dragon Naturally Speaking and it lets me dictate into my computer and the computer writes Out all the words that I say. So far I’m pretty happy with it. It’s doing a very good job and I see a very high accuracy rate. I still have to learn how to use it better and if I learned how to use it really well, I can see how it’s going to really improve my efficiency. After all I can only type that about 30 words per minute and I can speak quite a bit faster. They say it’s about 120 words per minute. In fact I can probably speak faster than I think, but I’m not sure about that. Anyway, although it’s missing the periods and I have to go back and put the periods in, I’m pretty happy with what it’s doing so far and I hope that this will make it easier for me to make entries for Smith’s School of English in Ikoma (生駒 英会話）in the future in this blog.
When I was a boy we never had any idea that computers would actually be this good. It was more or less a science-fiction idea and you could see it in the movies but it wasn’t something that would actually touch our lives. Now I feel like I’m living in a science-fiction movie; I can speak to my computer and it writes for me; I can contact people across the world and talk to them for free.
I’m sure there’s other things that you can think of that feel kind of like science fiction in your life today. What I wonder is: what about my son? I’m trying to teach him how to read and know the letters and write but I wonder if he really needs that information. Are those going to be old-fashioned skills?
Maybe the way he interacts with the computer in the future will be totally different… it will be all sounds and pictures and he won’t need to know how to read or write at all. Well I have to learn how to use this software a lot better now so I’m going to sign off at this point and start studying how to use the software better so I can make even better entries in the future. If you want to check it out, it’s called Dragon Naturally Speaking and so far I can say it’s a high recommend on my part.
I’ve used it before…think it’s useful but found it rather annoying at times. But in time, who knows?
Yeah, I heard that comment from other users but the users of the most recent version (number 10) seemed pretty enthused. Anyway, I am training it to learn my quirks. I have already decided it is good for dictation but not for navigation (too slow).