I'm still young and I find it annoying as well, mainly because typing is silent and doesn't strain your voice (good after a long day) and I often need to switch between languages and use unlisted jargon or proper nouns a lot.

And typing is much better to keep the stuff you say limited to whoever you are sending it, not to people standing around you.

As a foreigner with strong accent, often typing in multiple languages, speech recognition has always been at best hit and miss.

No sure how the technology has evolved recently, but that's already shameful enough when a cashier don't understand you, I wouldn't want my phone to do the same in public. My pride requires me to avoid speech recognition nowadays.

Bad news though - some countries like Spain have decided to offer more friendly automated phone service replacing "type 0 to whatever" by using speech recognition. That's a nightmare.

Yes, speech recognition and auto-correct have been more of nuisance than improvement for me.

Speech recognition works most of the time, but I often end up with one word that Siri just doesn't understand and then you end up spending more time trying to figure out how the device wants you to pronounce the word than it helps you saving time by using it instead of just typing it out. There are also some funny videos of foreign speakers trying to use Siri when it first came out - that has been exactly my experience with it as well.

Auto-correct is the other annoying one, which can wreak havoc when you're texting in multiple languages. Even if you manage to setup your device properly with all the different languages, it can still cause some problems whenever you mix the languages within a single message. However, the biggest problem I've experienced so far is when you send messages between parties where one of them doesn't have the foreign (latin based) language installed/configured yet. The replies I've received from people on their new phones often ranged from funny to cryptic, where you have no idea what they were trying to tell you. They just typed in the foreign text and hit send without checking only to have auto-correct send you something intangible.

My best friend is a writer [1] and back in January we were driving to a convention. He was working on a book at the time and his thought was to use the drive to get some work done. I was expecting him to type, but instead he tried dictating the book to his computer.

"... and that earned him the name of War Thug ... erase previous word ... War Thug ... erase previous word ... WAR ... THUG ... WAR THUG! WAR THUG! WAR THUG! NOT WARTHOG YOU GODDAMNED PIECE [CENSORED]"

It was the most amusing thirty minutes of the drive.

He ended up not dictating the book on the drive.

It was only later that the thought came to me that he should have gone ahead and cleaned up the text later. I'm not sure how successful that approach would be.

[1] https://seanhoade.com/books-by-hoade/

Unfortunately speech recognition often produces results so unusable that it might be harder to clean it up later as you wouldn't be able to tell what you were even trying to say.

... or, for the sake of argument, the same thing by speech recognition:

Unfortunately speech recognition often produces insulin usable and it might be hard to clean up later can be just you and me I want to tell what you're trying to say.

Maybe my voice sucks, or maybe I should robot it up more, but this is about the level I usually get... it's okay if you're doing a quick search on Google maps and don't mind repeating it 3 times but anything more than that and you may as well start typing.

Anecdotal but yes sometimes certainly it sucks -- I find it useful when I'm in a hurry, so I'll use Siri and say "Remind me to buy milk, toothpaste, red wire." Most of the time it works fine. Sometimes it cuts short and creates a reminder "Buy," or completely botches the words. I've been left standing clueless in the aisle as I'm trying to decipher what Siri should've heard. Especially true in my native language, Swedish.

And that's another issue. "Well of course speech recognition works* (mostly, kinda, in quiet environment, and in about 10 major languages). What, you want to speak your language? Go away - it's your own damn fault for not speaking English or Chinese like normal people do!" For most languages, this is a non-problem with a keyboard.

It would maybe help if there was easy way to mark a word for fixing later.

Speaking from a Chinese context this is very common. The irony to me is that spoken Mandarin is very fast and very colloquial. This coupled with the limited number of phonemes makes it very easy to transcribe speech incorrectly (i.e. not inline with the speaker's intention). The irony is that I've observed that most Mandarin speakers will slow down their speech and speak more clearly to try and ensure proper transcription.

This is amazing to me because most people I encounter don't do that for me, even though I am not a native speaker and by doing that they could ensure that our communication is smoother and more accurate.

If we're looking at the rest of these anecdotal comments as a reflection of the larger English-speaking (and perhaps American) public, the conclusion is that speech-to-text isn't very helpful but in a completely different linguistic and cultural environment (i.e. Chinese) we see that it is indeed quite successful.

One interesting thing to me is that, with sucessful enough voice-to-text transcription, the need for typing (and writing) becomes moot (in that context). I wonder if we'll see that typing as only a skill necessary for specific trades/occupations.

I'm old, and I'm with you. While the Amazon Echo has been way more useful to me than I would've thought because of its speech-interface, so I'm not surprised at the speed or accuracy of speech recognition. It just feels weird. If I wanted to talk to someone, I would call them. Of course, there are many chat situations (the recipient can't talk on the phone, or you're group chatting) that can't be executed via phone call. But I like the tactile experience of typing in a message in those situations. Feels more deliberate. Also, a lot easier (I would think) to insert multimedia and emojis.

However, I'm not old enough that I enjoy the tactile experience of handwriting a letter for the tradeoff in speed, though that's because my handwriting is so terrible.

This must be partly cultural. I'm currently in China, and a ton of people who use WeChat speak into their phones to send voice messages, rather than type. They hold the phone so that the phone's mic is close to their mouth. When they listen to voice messages, you can see them holding their phones up to their ears to hear their phone's speakerphone clearly. And yet there I am, mostly typing my WeChat text messages instead of sending voice messages. Though I sometimes hold my phone's speakerphone up to my ear to hear someone else's voice message....

edit: clarification on holding phone

Why not make a phone call instead of sending a voice message?

Because it's asynchronous?

I briefly worked with a Russian who would do this, and the asynchronousity was the reason he gave.

It was super annoying to be around him when he did it; at least it was Russian, if it was English it would be very distracting.

I'd never do it in public, but I use Siri (especially the dictation engine) ALL THE TIME when I'm alone.

yeah, this basically is me too.

The problem I have with speech recognition is it doesn't allow for contemplation and correction (easily). I can stop mid sentence, go back, change something, and finish the sentence when I'm writing. Much harder to do in speech recognition. Particularly with phone stuff, it's better with Dragon, etc., but for composition, writing is still the fastest way for me to get something completed.

Dictation is a bit of a performance. It's not composition. Although it can make you a better thinker, I believe, if you practice it.

Charles Krauthammer is, in my opinion, a pretty good speaker. Not many pauses, rarely any filler like "uh" "um" etc. I was googling around about him, and it turns out he was asked about this. He's a medical doctor, and back in the day, they would dictate their notes over a phone in the hospital, to a recording that would later be transcribed.

After doing this long enough, he became skilled at composing his thoughts without writing them down.

Listening to yourself makes a HUGE difference, in my experience. I've gotten used to recording myself for things like singing lessons, and it's been perhaps even more beneficial to replay the casual conversational exchanges with my teacher, as the singing itself.

In my case, I learned that I tend to speak in very quick bursts - get a thought out at a rapid clip, followed by a brief pause. Actively trying to measure comes across as far more intelligent I think, and I have time to think through what I'll say next.

Really hearing how many pauses, contractions, etc. you include in your regular speech helps you improve dramatically

It works really well for a first draft if you just ignore what was already there. You can add notes / metadata, but just keep talking as you go. Mentally I think speaking just sits in another area as people who have trouble writing can act out a story with hand puppets for their kids in real time.

At the end you end up with something that takes minimal effort to get into a readable first draft state. And after that it's just editing.

When the speech recognition experience becomes good enough, the awkwardness —both individual and social— will dissipate. For example: at the moment, the entry and exit points for speech recognition are kludgy at best. Once your many devices operate as a single entity, the entity recognizes your (and only your) voice, the entity simply performs on command, and a reliable and comfortable/natural exit point is designed, so much of the weirdness will just disappear.

With a lot of text entry that I tend to do in public - work-related email/Slack, texts to my partner, etc - I get a reasonable amount of privacy by typing vs. speaking. Even if I had access to a super-human speech recognizer, I would still feel really uncomfortable dictating my texts to friends.

I came to the conclusion that speech recognition is more efficient at input on my cellphone months ago, but could not bring myself to make the habit either.

I only do it when I want to send a message in a hands free manner, such as a text message saying that I am stuck in traffic.

Recently (past 2 years, even less), the speech recognition tech has gotten much better in my experience. I can ask it things like I would ask a human, and it works.

I would try to use it again, but this time not concentrating as much on the speech, and assuming success.

Disclaimer: This works especially well for things like setting timers and reminders, but I don't really use it for replying to texts.

I'm getting comfortable with talking to my watch. Its pretty discreet if you do it correctly. The mics on these things are very sensitive, so you don't have to yell. In fact, whispering works just fine. The problem is that no one tells people this and as we have seen from the popularity of Siri and other tech that people just automatically start yelling commands like they're using a computer from a 1950s sci-fi movie.

Even in places with loud background noise, its a non-issue considering everything nowadays has two mics for noise reduction. I'm very, very surprised at how well Google voice-to-speech works. When it fails its almost always because I have a poor signal from t-mobile or am saying something that's just too difficult for machines to parse correctly.

This has been my problem with talking to the watch or phone. It is usually the internet in the area that is the problem.

Also, one thing that is relatively hard for voice recognition to distinguish is varying between two different languages. I am always cooking and words like, dashi, kombu, and gnocchi are hard to parse. There are uses of words from other languages that don't involve saying "translate x in English"

By far my favorite thing about my smart watch is the ability to dictate texts.

I find, like some commentors above, that for longer-form composition, I often want to skip around. But for a text-length message the time to compose is drastically reduced by dictating it to my wrist rather than removing phone, unlocking phone, typing reply, etc. And it can be done largely hands-free.

I understand feeling weird speaking to your phone in public but I'm not sure I follow "hold the phone in an unnatural way". When I use speech recognition, I don't move my phone from the usual position.

He means holding it closer to your mouth, so you don't have to talk as loud.

I have a Moto X 2016 and it has a cool feature: simply lift the phone to the ear, as you would talk, and it starts the mic+recognition.

Then I just talk my question as I would have a conversation with a human and I get the answer spoken into the earpiece. Of course, sometimes I need to look up the info on the screen, since it doesn't answer straight.

I'm in my mid-50s, and I use speech recognition all the time on my phone. Multiple times per day on the average. I do have to speak like a news anchor, I don't hold the phone in a natural way, and I find it invaluable for productivity reasons. I don't give a shit if people think I'm holding my phone funny, or if they think it's weird to talk quietly into my phone. Life's too short for that. This answer was dictated into my iPad, by the way

It's the exact reason for me why I'll probably never use speech recognition for anything more than trying it out. I neither want to be the weird person talking to their computer/phone, nor do I want to annoy people, nor do I have any interest in sharing everything I do with everyone in hearing range.

But... people talk to their phones all the time :) Just hold it like normal when you're talking into it!

In public I hold the mic close to my mouth and lowtalk into it, no need to bring out the transatlantic accent radio voice.

I can hold a coffee with one hand, see where I'm going with my eyes, and still enter text. It became reliable enough for me to use habitually a couple years ago, and it keeps getting better.

This is awkward for me in public as well, but I found that the only way to get any (light) work done on days when I'm also taking care of my baby at home, is by dictating. Suddenly I can reply to emails and quick asks from coworkers, and still be present.

I'm old, and I feel the same way, but: I'm trying to take advantage of the technology more and more, despite my social quirks of using it, since I can no longer use my phone without excruciating thumb pain.

I'm with you, maybe I'm getting old too.

The local language here is not english, but I use english voice recognition since it's better, which adds extra weirdness.

I only use it to set alarms and reminders on google now.

I'm young. I also think this is "weird." I am happy, however, when I'm alone and I remember that my phone has this functionality.

Given the number of bluetooth headsets out there, nobody would look at you twice for talking in public, these days.

That must be a local thing. The only time I ever see people talking on bluetooth headsets in public, it's the older guys who think they're cool because they're using expensive tech. Everyone else just holds the phone up to their ear.

It feels weird to me to talk into my phone even in private.

I think it just means you have a bit of empathy, and awareness of how other people might view you. Many, if not most people seem to lack those qualities in general, never mind in relation to their phones.

On the topic, something which reads your subvocalizations is really needed, and could even increase the speed!

> On the topic, something which reads your subvocalizations is really needed, and could even increase the speed!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition