Even those of you who have little or nothing to do with computers on a personal or professional level probably realise that much of the infrastructure of modern life is organised and controlled by them, and we are becoming increasingly dependent.
Diverse activities like the cinema, farming, transport, music, forensics, and the lottery, all use computers.

Although techniques and technologies continuously evolve, the 101+ switches – your keyboard – have changed little in principle since their invention.
Except that they’ve mutated to televisions, microwaves, stereos, telephones … even wrist watches. The television remote control is typical – apart from changing channels, most of the other functions remain a mystery to all but the most persistent.

So, communicating with a computer means pressing keys, and moving a mouse or touching the screen. Repetitive physical tasks that have a rigid logic, need great care and precision, prevent a comfortable sitting position, and, once the novelty has worn off, become seriously dull.

And yet, communicating with your friends just means talking. Talking is enjoyable, often illogical, wonderfully ambiguous, evocative – but so effective. If only computers …

Before looking at all the sideshows, think about your interaction with your own computer. Wouldn’t you just love to give up typing and let the computer listen to your voice.
Forget about all the typing mistakes, the twenty words a minute on a good day, all that backspacing just to delete a few words, those unmemorable keyboard ‘shortcuts’, strange characters you can’t delete, the lost spaces, ‘creative’ spellings, missing words, the repetitions, the death grip on the mouse … all because the keyboard got in the way of your ideas.

But it’s not just about you doing the talking. Computers can talk back, with convincing intonation, and in other languages. They can translate pages of text, whilst you visit the coffee shop.

They’ll soon be asking if they can leave early on Friday, or leave the accounts for a few days. Initially, we can bribe them with upgrades – but what then.

So, it won’t be long before you and your computer are chatting away, sharing files and experiences, wasting time together, and learning all about everything.

Right now, why not just talk to your computer. And let it talk to you. Make your work easier. And your life better.

Spend less time at work. Don’t choose the epitaph ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office’.

The Talking Technologies Web Project is an information resource. How can we, and how should we, talk to computers. And how can they talk to us, and what will they tell us.

It’s already quite easy to talk to computers, and let them talk back. It doesn’t get the prize for conversation but, soon, talking with machinery, androids, and bio-technology, will become a natural dialogue.
However, since most of you don’t know any androids and would rather just skip the typing, we’re going to look at products that are in the shops now. They’re easy to use, like toasters or telephones. It’s OK to fail at things but, if you can’t use them, it’s almost certainly something you’re doing, or not doing.

The Talking Technologies Web Project makes full use of the advanced features of modern web software. Although most of the images are small, and should appear quickly, we’ve assumed that you’ve not set your web software options to over-ride graphic and colour content, and that your display will register the full range of colours.

To help you find your way through all this information, we’ve used pink ‘clickers’, similar to those on a DAT or CD transport. The following row of clickers are just examples, so are not active.