A few years ago, I developed an RSI....

My life would never be the same again. RSI stands for Repetitive Strain Injury. What it means in simple terms is that both my arms have a problem that cause me to no longer be able to work 18 hours at a time on a keyboard.

This has its up side, in that NO ONE should be working 18 hours at a computer keyboard. However, since computers make up a big portion of my job skills this posed a serious problem for me.

To compensate, I have taken a number of steps to address the issues, and developing a keen interest in human / computer interaction has of course been a positive side effect of all this.

I currently use as part of my strategy a voice recognition system from Dragon systems. My department (the EE/CS dept here at MIT) has been amazingly supportive in aiding me with the acquisition and development of this technology to the point where it provides me (and them) a serious benefit.

I will discuss some of the trade offs I have learned to expect with this technology here and also address some of the things I'd like to see in the future.