##### 2025-04-02 So recently me and my wife had a baby and my hands are usually full changing diapers, holding the baby or with house chores during the day. In the meanwhile I want to be able to interact with the outside world, read emails, respond to messages or maybe even write a blog! (This is written by speech to text on my phone with [superwhisper](https://superwhisper.com/). None of the recent developments so far has really changed the way we interact with our devices, thus I came up with this blog post) #### Talking to my Toaster? Hard Pass. Oh, another tech fad has graced us with its oh-so-innovative presence: conversational interfaces. Yes, because clicking buttons and typing coherent thoughts was clearly too taxing for our evolved human brains. Now, we're promised a future where we talk to our devices like they're our slightly less intelligent but infinitely more obedient servants. How...thrilling. Every few years, the tech world gets its collective knickers in a twist over some shiny new AI development, proclaiming, "THIS IS IT! Natural language is the only way forward!" We've been through this rodeo more times than a bucking bronco at a Texan wedding. Remember Siri? Remember those clunky chatbots promising "conversational commerce"? Remember when your AirPods were supposed to become the next big platform? Yeah, me neither. Because surprise, surprise, we're still tapping, scrolling, and yes, even typing like the Luddites we apparently are. What's with this bizarre obsession? Is it some kind of tech anemoia, a yearning for the Star Trek computer that never materialized? Or are we just so pathetically enamored with the term "natural language" that we assume it must be the pinnacle of human-computer interaction? Newsflash, folks: just because you can doesn't mean you should. > Let's be brutally honest. Conversational interfaces are slow. Painfully slow. Imagine trying to convey complex information through a series of back-and-forth verbal volleys with a digital assistant that probably still thinks "literally" means "not figuratively." Give me a well-designed GUI any day where I can see all my options laid out like a glorious buffet of digital delights. --- > Shortly, tapping on my weather app is and will always be more reliable and FASTER than typing or saying "What's the weather today?" And the input? Oh, the joy of slurring your perfectly enunciated command into your phone, only for it to misinterpret it as something vaguely similar but utterly useless. Or the pleasure of repeating yourself multiple times to a smart speaker that apparently left its hearing aids in another dimension. It's like trying to have a serious conversation with a toddler who's just discovered the word "why." Don't even get me started on the privacy implications. Do we really need another digital entity eavesdropping on our every utterance, ready to monetize our mundane grocery lists and late-night existential crises? I, for one, relish the moments of blessed silence where my devices aren't actively trying to decipher my mumblings. So, while the tech bros continue to chase this conversational unicorn, the rest of us will be over here, happily clicking, tapping, and efficiently getting things done without having to engage in awkward digital small talk. Conversational interfaces? More like contrived interfaces. ---- Wake me up when they actually become useful