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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Yea, I don't want to sit there at my computer, which can handle lots of different input methods, like keyboard, mouse, clicking, dragging, or my phone which can handle gestures, pinching, swiping... and try to articulate what I need it to do in English language conversation. This is actually a step backwards in human-computer interaction. To use an extreme example: imagine instead of a knob on my stereo for volume, I had a chat box where I had to type in "Volume up to 35". Most other "chatbot solved" HCI problems are just like this volume control example, but less extreme.

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It's funny, because the chat bot designers seem to be continually attempting to recreate the voice computer interface from Star Trek: TNG. Yet if you watch the show carefully, the vast majority of the work done by all the Enterprise crew is done via touchscreens, not voice.

The only reason for the voice interface is to facilitate the production of a TV show. By having the characters speak their requests aloud to the computer as voice commands, the show bypasses all the issues of building visual effects for computer screens and making those visuals easy to interpret for the audience, regardless of their computing background. However, whenever the show wants to demonstrate a character with a high level of computer mastery, the demonstration is almost always via the touchscreen (this is most often seen with Data), not the voice interface.

TNG had issues like this figured out years ago, yet people continue to fall into the same trap because they repeatedly fail to learn the lessons the show had to teach.

It's actually hilarious to think of a scene where all the people on the bridge are shouting over each other trying to get the ship to do anything at all.

Maybe this is how we all get our own offices again and the open floor plan dies.

Hmm. Maybe something useful will come of this after all!

"...and that is why we need the resources. Newline, end document. Hey, guys, I just got done with my 60 page report, and need-"

"SELECT ALL, DELETE, SAVE DOCUMENT, FLUSH UNDO, PURGE VERSION HISTORY, CLOSE WINDOW."

Here's hoping this at least gets us back to cubes.

Getting our own offices would simply take collective action, and we're far too smart to join a union, err, software developers association to do that.

They’d just have an array of microphones everywhere and isolate each voice - rooms only need n+1 microphones where n is the maximum number of people. That’s already simple to do today, and it’s not even that expensive.

Profound observation, thank you for this.

Remember Alexa? Amazon kept wanting people to buy things with their voice via assorted echo devices, but it turns out people really want to actually be in charge of what their computers are doing, rather than talking out loud and hoping for the best.

“volume up to 35”

>changes bass to +4 because the unit doesn't do half increments

“No volume up to 35, do not touch the EQ”

>adjusts volume to 4 because the unit doesn’t do half increments

> I reach over, grab my remote, and do it myself

We have a grandparent that really depends on their Alexa and let me tell you repeatedly going “hey Alexa, volume down. Hey Alexa, volume down. Hey Alexa, volume down,” gets really old lol we just walk over and start using the touch interface

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