INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: KEYBOARDS AND MICE, TWO ENDANGERED SPECIES.

Summary: Computer companies are actively working to develop vocal technology which may in the long term render keyboards and mice obsolete. Speaking at the Comdex computer fair in Las Vegas, Nevada, Charles Hemphill of Conversational Computing, a company specialising in the vocal control of computers, indicated that the challenge is now to replace the cursor with conversational parameters.

Dictation could eventually replace typing of documents through voice recognition. Researchers working...