On technology

Earlier today, I posted in this space about some difficulties I'm running into with what are known as essential familial tremors. While I'm done speaking upon that particular topic, I want to take a minute or two to discuss some the things that technology is made available to us to help make life a little more normal for folks with troubles like mine.

Voice to text technology is not new; it has, however, been rife with difficulties. Central among those has been the ability of the technology to understand regional dialects, accents, and the general differences in the way each of us individually speaks. While I am reluctant to turn this space into an infomercial, I have been absolutely delighted with some software that I recently picked up from the folks at Dragon. With just a little bit of time taken for the software to adjust to my voice, I am able to write things like this post in a matter of minutes, rather than the hours it would take if I had to type this by hand.

This makes me more productive, more responsive, and allows me to reengage the world socially better than I had possibly expected. I had really feared that these tremors were going to keep me from wasting your time in this space forever. Happily, it appears that I'm wrong.


I've always been a bit of a geek, so I guess I don't really understand why I am so surprised at the effectiveness of this. Which leads me to the wonders of technology in general. It's been said many times before; change is ongoing, change is inevitable, and change is good. Resisting change, whether in politics, in technology, or in life in general, will get you nowhere. Embrace it, roll with it, or get out of the way.For example, I recently purchased a new laptop running Windows 8. As a long time Windows user, I find the new operating system to be a monumental pain in the ass. Windows open and close, seemingly on their own, and I find myself redoing things over and over. In the spirit of embracing change, however, I am getting better at it. In other words, get over it, scribe.

With all of that said, this makes it three rants in one day in this space. That's enough.

Until next time,

Excelsior!