Voice: The Next Computing Empire -- The Motley Fool

Imagine driving down the highway, coming home from work, and without taking your hands off the wheel or hitting any buttons, asking your car to turn up the heat in your house, preheat the oven for dinner, and play your favorite album, all in the same breath. Picture negotiating with a street vendor in Beijing, having your phone translate the entire conversation between Mandarin and English out loud, so you can haggle in real time. Or how about a stuffed animal that can tell your daughter interactive stories every night before bed, reshaping the adventure at every twist and turn based on her responses and reactions. The human voice is well on its way to becoming the next major medium we use to interact with computers, and as we'll explore in this two-part series, voice computing is the burgeoning field of technology making it possible. Already spanning multiple consumer and enterprise ventures (think call center routing, digital dictation, or the virtual assistants on smartphones), the industry's ultimate aim is enabling people to carry on hands-free, conversational-style interactions with computers.