Using phone numbers, remote controls and computer keyboards will likely seem quaint within a decade as new capability to turn human speech into accurate, efficient computer code radically changes the ways we live and work.

That’s the outlook of Lawrence R. Rabiner, associate director of the Center for Advanced Information Processing (CAIP) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in an overview of speech processing, “The Power of Speech,” in the journal Science, available Friday (Sept. 12).

Rabiner said he expects to see the following voice-control scenarios evolving over the next five to 10 years:

Telephone calls will be made by name, not number.

Intelligent voice-controlled communications agents, essentially nonintrusive network-based robots, will place our phone calls, track down the people we want to reach and let us now whether these people want to talk to us.

Voice-controlled agents will help us find deals on merchandise, remind us about appointments and birthdays, and control our appliances from any location.

Virtually all devices in the home and office will be network accessible and voice controllable.

The distinction between work life and home life will blur as we can do whatever we want from wherever we are at any time. Work will become something we do, not someplace we go.

Rutgers University press release