A keyboard? How quaint

The era of voice search and voice-operated software is upon us. As a developer I live and die by the keyboard, but I can already see the signs: Like many people, for example, I talk to my Android phone (for example, "Navigate to Lowes [or Starbucks or Harris Teeter]") to get directions.

In Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report, she reports that Google Voice search queries have risen by a factor of seven since 2010. I've also noticed that my 12-year-old son does nearly all of his searches via voice -- and my girlfriend texts me this way on a regular basis. Also, the company I work for, Lucidworks, recently announced a new partnership with IBM to integrate Watson and text-to-speech capabilities into our enterprise search product. 

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