Monday, April 13, 2009

Talking to Computers

Today I’m engaging in a bit of speculative thinking regards the future of online bingo gameplay. I’m doing this after reading a report on the latest comments by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in which he believes we will see a shift away from using the keyboard to interact with our computers and instead start actually talking to them!

Voice recognition software has been around for a long time but is only now becoming sophisticated enough to really contemplate engaging in actual dialogue with a computer. Combined with touch screen technology, Bill Gates has this to say about his company’s future interest in this area:

“It’s one of the big bets we’re making,” Gates said at a recent talk given at Carnegie Mellon University about Microsoft’s expectations that Internet searches will be handled increasingly via dialogue than through keyboard. Adding comments about researchers’ needs he concluded: “They’re dealing with so much information that … the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential.”

So how does this relate to the way we play online bingo games? Simply put, traditional bingo’s excitement was often based on the moment a room full of players heard someone shout “bingo!”. I can see the day that online bingo halls will also reverberate to actual shouts of “BINGO!” by online players and this will bring a whole new and exciting dimension to the online bingo community.

I’m not an expert in the field of voice recognition software or communicative computer programmes, but I do like the sound (no pun intended) of actually shouting bingo the ‘old school’ way. I’m sure such an innovation will see many more current land-based bingo players switch their allegiances to bingo online.