Click here right now if you're using Chrome and your computer has a microphone, for a fun mini-app that recreates a classic depiction of technology in a movie that's over 30 years old but still feel like the future: The voice-controlled Esper Machine from Blade Runner. (See the scene below, preferably with a whiskey, neat.)
Built by Andy Cummins and a couple other devs for a hack-day event at their digital media company Cogapp, it uses the Web Speech API, OpenSeadragon, IIIF and HTML5 Canvas. More detail on his Medium here:
Why did we want to do this? Partly because it would be fun but also because voice control is becoming more and more prevalent. We wanted to explore how well voice control works when using a browser rather than an additional piece of hardware. We’re also only [one year] away from the 2019 setting of the original Blade Runner movie, so this kind of thing should be standard by now, right?
Voice-activated control is standard, but because the computer misses what we're saying roughly one-third of the time, and most of us aren't Harrison Ford being paid to pretend to talk to a computer, we rarely use it. Except maybe for a fun afternoon break. Don't forget to growl "Give me a hardcopy" at the end. (If you have a printer hooked up.)
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