I find it funny when "futurists" try to incorporate an age-old broken communication medium into current technologies. I can't figure out why restaurant drive-thrus still have a speaker and microphone! Haven't they screwed up enough orders to figure out that the system is flawed? Even humans can't communicate effectively with speech, which is why we are constantly saying "Come again?" and "Say what?" to each other like idiots. So how can we expect a computer to figure it out? By the way, who had the *crazy* idea to incorporate text messaging into cell phones, and why? Seems to me like older people struggle to understand this more than younger folks. "Why would you ever want to type when you can just talk?!" they proclaim. Because some people, at some times, would rather press a hundred letters instead of saying a dozen words. The messenger can get their point across without drawing attention to themself. The message is sent when the sender wants it to be sent, and it is read when the reader wants it to be read. What's wrong with that?! Text/typing is also flawed, which is why it bothers me to still see things like voice/hand recognition being discussed. We would be better off thinking about the next NEW method of communication instead of trying to conjure some hybrid of past failures. This was a good post, Jeff!