Micboard
Will input change with AI? Speech detection with AI is remarkable and, in particular, the whisper-mode lets people speak comfortably in public. Folks are using it for everything from writing emails, creating presentations, and even writing code.
But does that mean the death of my beloved keyboard? I like being as hands-free as the next driver (well, maybe not all drivers...) but right now it seems voice is meant to fill the gap when I can't use a keyboard, it's not the default.
There's the obvious social issue of talking outloud to a device. Whisper-mode and earbuds solves the privacy issue, but even then I've only found voice-input to be useful when I'm being conversational (researching, brainstorming, learning) or directional (send a short msg, asking for music to be played, requesting directions). It's a different story when I'm writing, editing, iterating, refining.
It's hard to edit on the fly with spoken instructions. While reading is linear, writing isn't. You write a phrase and realize it reads better when you reverse the clause. You skip back a few sentences when you realize you can better set up your next argument with a few tweaks. The keyboard lets me backtrack, edit, adjust, refine. Voice may be faster, but being slower can be an asset. It lets me be more critical as I see the words come out, and I can jump around easily.
Maybe there's a future without keyboards - but it'll will have to accomodate a new way of speaking that accounts for keyboard shortcuts, the text cursor. It'll be interesting to see how language evolves.
