Microsoft push to replace keyboards: Gates

22/02/2008 11:00:00 AM


PITTSBURGH - Bill Gates predicts people will interact more and more with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards.

The Microsoft chairman and world's richest individual is making a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company's daily operations in July to concentrate on philanthropy.

Speaking Thursday to about 1,200 students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Gates called it "one of the big bets we're making."

He says that within five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing.

Gates also says the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy, must become even more advanced.

He says that with all the information the science community is dealing with, "the need for machine learning to figure out what's going on with that data is absolutely essential."

i could see this one coming, makes alot of sense actually. It would be kind of nice, if we felt like talking instead of typing alone. Of course, there's many other benefits, as for the injured or disabled on a bigger scale, as well as science. I could see it going alot further, too. *But let me keep my keyboard, not ready to give it up just yet, or better yet, lets just have dual features; and true voice recognition has along ways to go. But if anyone can pull if off, it's da Man!..lol

i cannot talk to 5 diff people about 10 diff subjects all at the same time if I have to talk. But i can type.

LOL, voice wreck-cogniton, that is funny!! It would be great though, but appears there's still a LONG ways yet to be as dependable as the good 'ole keyboard! Yeah, just when you want to show someone, it doesn't work! =)