Several theorist have identified similar stages of technology acceptance and seem to agree on the concepts of early adopters and later adopters (Diffusion of Innovations - Everette M. Rogers) with a varied assortment of steps in between. Over the weekend, while 'training' my laptop to recognize my voice, the thought of generations-to-come and how they might view the silliness of an argument over 'qwerty' or 'Dvorak' keyboards struck a note in the definitions of stages of technology.
Voice recognition technology is not new. DragonDictate for Windows 1.0 arrived on the scene in 1994. The diffusion of the technology has been relatively slow. As of this writing, no one is touting a system that is 100% accurate and few hardware developers include voice recognition/transcription software with their products. I would guess that we are still on the low end of the diffusion curve with early adopters still struggling, but gaining ground, to work out the bugs in their software investment... I include myself in that group.
There is an "Aha!" moment coming in our future: the epiphany that points to the keyboard as an unnecessary device... the Appendix of a computer whose life becomes a victim of computer hardware/software evolution. And with that epiphany comes a group, the keyboard challenged, who are opportunistically propelled into geekdom by instantly acquired publishing skills
Although voice recognition is considered a relatively new innovation, the impact on keyboards for computers and/or computer appliances may be as significant as the introduction of the remote control for the family television. Is is even possible to puchase a television without a remote control? (Note, that there is life without a remote) Using that analogy, how far away are we from purchasing computers without a keyboard, but with a highly sophisticated voice recognition system? When viewed as an inclusive technology of the personal computer and not a software technology in and of itself, voice recognition will allow the user to bypass steps in the technology acceptance process path and yet reap the rewards without a slow and tedious learning curve...thus the epiphanic opportunists. Perhaps this is a person who sat on the sideline as technolgy passed by until the day arrived when, voila!, there is no need to struggle with acquiring skills to access a technology (i.e. typing skills, grammer, word processing, etc.), those steps are skipped and that person's existing skill set is sufficient to bridge the technology gap that may have appeared insurmountable. Some might argue that this would categorize such a user as an early adaptor of the new technology, the voice recognition computer; however, as the timeline of technology introductions compresses further, the likelyhood of epiphanic opportunists evolving into a well defined classification increases... food for thought.