Will a single letter die?

Under the onslaught of information technology, absolutely familiar and understandable things begin to be forgotten and fall into decay. I think everyone remembers the hours spent in words in attempts to deduce the even outlines of letters. Many teachers of the old Soviet school believe that continuous writing develops fine motor skills and, as a result, intelligence. But the US government decided differently: since last year, copybooking has become an optional subject and schools can accept students' works written in block letters: students will write only in block letters . Let's try to figure out why this happened and how modern technology supports block letters.



Have you written by hand for a long time? It’s much easier for a modern person to build up an SMS or an e-mail than to display squiggles on paper. Signed postcards from other countries became a curiosity, receiving a letter “from my grandmother” was a pleasant surprise (and if with us, the fact of receiving it is already incredibly pleasant), and few people are engaged in rewriting abstracts from fellow students.
Good or bad time will tell, in this article I propose to see how modern technologies can accelerate the process of processing, recognition and transmission of information.

Speech recognition

More recently, speech and text recognition technologies finally brought to mind have become available to the mass user. Consider the current speech recognition suggestions.

I think that everything that is possible has already been said about Siri, so I propose focusing on similar technologies from competitors.
The main problems of voice search, in my opinion, are language support, the availability of fast Internet and the cost of devices powerful enough to support this technology.

Voice search from Google appeared before Siri, and after the release of the latter for a long time inferior. At the moment, everything has changed significantly. More recently, a new version of Android 4.1.1 has been released, which solves a number of the problems mentioned above. The first thing you should pay attention to is the possibility of offline speech recognition for search queries. Now there is no need to wait for a response from a server sending a response over a slow line. There are also indications in solving the problem of supporting multilingualism, at least work with the Russian language has appeared and it is quite tolerable. The only thing that is upset so far is the lack of a large number of devices in the latest firmware version. For example, the capabilities of the recently released Nexus 7 are very encouraging:



With Microsoft and its Windows 8, it is obvious that such an important aspect is also not missed. There are many interesting and promising announcements. In the reviews, the technology looks well completed and capable of competing well.



I think that one cannot ignore the complex analysis systems and their most prominent representative - IBM Watson, who recently made a splash on the game Jeopardy !, defeating all the eminent grandmasters. At the moment, such a mechanism is not available for the average user, but IBM is adapting its solution to work in medical organizations and large companies, for example, to analyze the performance of financial markets.

Printed text recognition

Unlike voice recognition, the convenience and size of the device when working with text are much more important. Let’s look at what manufacturers and programmers offer us today.

I think it’s worth mentioning a new niche of “transformers” - portable devices that, when connected to the dock, turn into a full-fledged computer / tablet. An interesting representative is ASUS Padfone , which was recently written on a hub The niche of transformers is quite young, but, in my opinion, these devices are ideal for educational institutions, since there is no need to carry a healthy laptop with you, which is very important for students and schoolchildren, already loaded with textbooks, physical education and other equipment.

The manufacturers' interest in handwriting and printed text technologies is also confirmed by the fact that Windows 8 has improved support for writing on the screen, which we could see so far on only some devices.



It seems to me that the unified letter remains to exist for a very short time - it will gradually become oblivious, will become another anachronism. It’s much easier for a child to master printing on a computer, because for this it is enough to know the alphabet. There will be no need to loop hooks in the long evenings and much more free time will appear. The main thing is that this time should not be spent pumping a character in WoW ...

I have a question for you, Khabravchane. Tell me, how long have you written in words? And when, according to your forecasts, goose feathers will be canceled in Russia in our schools?