bye english

we're getting, in the next month or two, new software for speech recognition. among the reasons, i believe, that our current speech recognition software isn't very good is that there has been a lack of conformity among the transcriptionists as far as formatting documents and correcting grammatical and other errors in dictation. the software can't "learn" unless it gets the same sort of input from all fronts. so, as i understand it, the policy in the early months of our use of this new software will be to generally not correct grammatical mistakes made by the software. (this could be an oversimplification, but it does seem to be the broad stroke.) there is a distinct worry among a few of us in the department that the quality of reports we produce in the near and far future will drop dramatically and painfully. at the moment i'm torn between fighting this and trying not to think about it. i worry anyway about the deterioration of the english language, what with text messages and other horrors, and this can only contribute to its downfall.

of course, we don't yet know exactly how terrible it's going to be, how restricted we will be in our powers to correct the errors the software will make (or, rather the dictators' errors the software will not correct). we soon will know, though. the good thing about this software is that it's supposed to increase productivity by 200% or more. but we'll just see what the cost will be.

anyway. the new qa position has finally been posted. i've decided not to apply for it. it's not what i want after all, after some months of mulling it all over. i've had enough of working closely with management and i'm ready to just be a worker again. i started a new piece of fiction this week, writing i mean, at long last, and this will be a focus in my life, rather than advancement up the management ladder.