This is my online domain where I work to understand the world of the Application Programming Interfaces, also known as APIs. This new way of sharing data using the web is touching almost every aspect of our increasingly digital lives, providing access to the bits and bytes that make our personal and professional worlds go round.

This is my research specifically into how APIs are enabling voice applications. I'm studying Alexa, and other ways in which APIs are used to respond to voices, as well as return the data, content, and other resources needed for voice responses. Sometimes this research overlaps with audio, telco, and other areas of my research but is zeroing in on voice enablement.

API Evangelist is a network of data driven projects and APIs which I curate and manage as part of this ongoing research, hoping to provide easy access to the moving parts of my work. Everything you see here runs on Github, making everything forkable, and reusable for both humans and machines.

I hear a lot of noise about voice as an interface. I don’t doubt that voice enablement will have it’s place, and be used in a variety of situations, I’m just not convinced that it will end be everything everybody is thinking it will be. My feelings on the subject are mostly because of how I see the world, but come to thinking about, all my feelings are this way. Hmmmm? While the API aspects of voice enablement like Alexa are interesting, I seriously doubt that it will become the primary interface for how folks engage with the web, and move too far beyond a novelty, because of the existing deal we’ve established between our brain and the keyboard.

There is an connection the exists between my brain, fingers, and the keyboard. This exists on my laptop, as well as my iPhone and iPad. I’m just not a talker. I just don’t talk on the phone. I make most conversations straight forward and to the point, and enjoy talking with people, not much else. I can’t even take audio notes. As I said, I recognize that this is completely from my perspective, and there are other folks who will adopt a voice enabled way of doing things, and be just find talking to get things done. I just don’t think it will be as many people as we think, and I don’t think it will be practical for much of what we need to get done. We need more connection, privacy, and isolation with our thoughts to accomplish what we need on the Internet each day.

Having a conversation, or verbally giving commands to my computer and devices just doesn’t seem as elegant as typing, with a combination of mouse or finger gestures via a trackpad. I’ve become pretty skilled with generating a pretty significant amount of content via a MacBook keyboard and trackpad. There are plenty of ways to optimize my output in this environment, I just don’t see going voice will bring me any benefits, efficiencies, or even be obtainable in the environment(s) I regularly work. I know many folks are looking to push forward technology, but there are some things I think just work, and will continue to work for sometime. I’ll keep experimenting with new technology that comes out, but I don’t see anything on the horizon that will disrupt the connection that exists between me and the keyboard, doing what I do online each day.

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