Speech recognition: a productivity boom ahead?

If tech vendors and automakers have their way all apps will be speech enabled and armed with the ability to hop between settings.

The big question: will a productivity boom follow?

In my travels on SmartPlanet and ZDNet, it's almost impossible to avoid the fact that speech technology is becoming mainstream. IBM's Watson---a supercomputer that's a Jeopardy phenom---would be nowhere without speech recognition.

And then there's the following developments:

• Automobiles are increasingly becoming app environments. Ford, Toyota and others are starting to app enable the interiors of their cars. This connectivity will mean that smartphones and cars will increasingly be intertwined. Speech technology is the only way to applify cars safely.
• Speech apps are starting to surface from the likes of Amazon, Dictionary.com and SpeechTrans.
• Voice to text technology is becoming standard in many smartphones phones.
• In some verticals such as healthcare, voice recognition and speech-to-text technologies are at the heart of the IT revolution. After all, doctors dictate a lot more than they type.

Toss in the fact that companies like Nuance are trying to entice app developers with software development kits and you can see the day where everything is voice enabled.

When that happens, apps will hop from setting to setting. In theory, there should be some gains to productivity.

What are your thoughts?

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com