Communications: One way to talk to computers: Voice commands to computers may substitute in part for conventional input devices

No longer the province of science fiction, machines that recognize and interpret spoken commands are now a commercial reality ¿ and have been for more than three years. Fortunately for the human ego, such machines cannot (as yet) take over the operator´s task. They do not really understand the words, but merely recognize them and perform preprogrammed assignments in response. The benefit of a simple system of this type is that it can be ¿taught¿ to recognize any language or accent. In other words, the machine is trained to understand the user ¿ not the other way around.