SwiftKey and Predictive Text Speeds Up Stephen Hawking’s Communication

Stephen Hawking remains even with his “broken body” one of the most famous and prolific scientists of all time. It has always been one of life’s most amazing ironies to me that one of the greatest minds resides in body stricken down with a degenerative motor neuron disease that has left him completely unable to communicate verbally or physically with the exception of eye and some limited facial movements. Hawking is now sporting newly equipped Lenovo x230 tablet packing Windows 7 Professional to his wheelchair and a heavily  upgraded communication platform developed by Intel and SwiftKey that will allow him to better work and interact with colleagues and staff:

(from Geeks)

The end result of these changes is a dramatic reduction in the time it takes for Hawking to complete basic tasks. Where things like opening a file used to take upwards of ten minutes, in several cases it has been reduced by a factor of 10. Typing out sentences has been improved by about 20% as well, due to SwiftKey’s ability to record your previous keystrokes and use them to predict what you will say next. This is especially effective for someone like Hawking, whose day-to-day conversations often include complicated interstellar constructs that are very easy for SwiftKey to predict in context.

There is no telling what will come from Stephen Hawking with this new upgrade to his communication and work system. Hopefully these new technologies will make their way to all sufferers of the same disease as Hawking and allow them some additional freedom to communicate much more effectively.