Many science fiction movies, TV series, and books have humans talking to computers or robots, early examples being HAL in the movie 2001 or C-3PO and R2-D2 in the Star Wars movies. Beyond the inspiration of movies and books, speech recognition was one of the earliest forms of Artificial Intelligence, which, as today, captured imaginations because it tried to emulate human abilities with computers. Today, speech recognition applications are common. Those applications include digital assistants on smartphones, transcription of medical reports, speakers that can play music or answer questions for us upon voice command, and automated telephone customer service. They are impressive and continually improving. The Lost History of “Talking to Computers” by William Meisel is based on a paid-subscription, no-ads newsletter the author published monthly on commercial applications of speech recognition for 27 years starting in 1993. Many companies were inspired by the science fiction promise of the technology. The following table summarizes the number of companies trying to make this a profitable endeavor in each of the 27 years that are covered in the 309 monthly issues of the newsletter. The following table from the book summarizes the number of companies discussed each year. Year Companies Year Companies Year Companies 1993 21 2002 239 2011 378 1994 69 2003 286 2012 252 1995 81 2004 367 2013 366 1996 75 2005 361 2014 220 1997 90 2006 312 2015 235 1998 104 2007 229 2016 161 1999 124 2008 319 2017 215 2000 218 2009 326 2018 391 2001 290 2010 394 2019 110* * Partial year (3 months) Companies discussed in the newsletter each year Each of these hundreds of companies argued they had a competitive advantage in either the technology or application design over all the other companies they were competing with. The hurdle they all faced was the amount of computer power that was required to convert speech to text accurately and to understand the intent of that speech. The companies had to find limited applications that both provided a needed service and could be delivered at an acceptable cost. The book gives selected examples of how companies addressed that goal and how the technology and applications evolved over time. Many companies failed, but many succeeded financially by going public or being acquired at a good price. Some are still in operation today. The book uses the perspective of this history for insights into how Artificial Intelligence should be viewed currently and how it will evolve in the future. Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1665773138 Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lost-history-of-talking-to-computers-william-meisel/1147153419