Dictate to Your Mac!

When I fell off my bicycle and broke my arm a little more than a month ago, I realized that my MacBook’s keyboard would be a lot less effective, and a lot more painful to use. I also realized that I had to continue writing papers for classes. I thought: what if my computer could listen to me?

Apple implements a speech recognition utility as part of Universal Access in OS X, but in order to enhance accuracy, it is limited to commands. What I wanted to do would require something else. Luckily, MacSpeech Dictate, which was awarded “Best of Show” at Macworld 2008, had just been released, using an industry benchmark recognition engine called “Dragon.” I decided to try it out.

After installing it, I was met with a setup process that allows you to train the software to detect the idiosyncrasies of my voice as well as training me on the limitations of the computer in being able to contextualize what I might be talking about, meaning that it’s important to annunciate.

Ironically, I was learning about neural networks in philosophy of cognitive science at the same time this happened, which are used extensively in speech recognition software to quantize voice patterns and distinguish between your voice and background noise. It’s a pretty cool technology that has come out of artificial intelligence research in the past half-decade.

So how did it work? I was very impressed at both the speed and accuracy of the software. Certainly, it was a lot more accurate than one hand and quicker than typing with two. What I noticed, in fact, was that my speech when talking to people was improved because my MacBook required me to be clearer. What I realized most was that dictation is a very different cognitive process, whereby one has to think, then speak, when compared to typing, whereby an internal dialogue which can occur simultaneously with one’s typing.

For many people who have not yet become accustomed to using a keyboard, or want to try to communicate with their computer differently, this presents a great opportunity for you to better communicate with your Mac!