<ul><li>Some scholars see mid-20th century Chinese typewriters as a basis for predictive text.</li><li>Today, predictive text lives in the liminal space between what you will type and what you mean to type.</li><li>It's a step beyond auto-correct.</li><li>Both are rooted in natural language processing (NLP), a field that combines linguistics and computer science.</li><li>In functionality, predictive text feels less like autocorrect and much more like the Google’s search engine’s autocomplete system, which guesses what you’re about to type into the search bar—based on what billions of other people are searching.</li></ul>

The origins of predictive text

<ul><li>Predictive text reinforces certain speech and serves as a reminder that no one is that original.</li><li>The future of typing may involve fewer misspellings and slightly less work.</li><li>In a few years, computers could play an even more active role in how we write. Eventually, we may not even need a keyboard to type, and could instead pantomime the movements.</li><li>Or maybe a neural implant like the one Elon Musk is pushing will usher in “think-to-type” technology. Depending on how such technologies are adapted, and by whom, typing itself may ultimately become obsolete.</li></ul>

The future of typing

<figure><img src="https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=410&amp;h=231" srcset="https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=410&amp;h=231 410w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=820&amp;h=462 820w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=690&amp;h=389 690w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1380&amp;h=778 1380w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=950&amp;h=536 950w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1900&amp;h=1072 1900w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1600&amp;h=902 1600w, https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2016-10-14T120000Z_178928834_D1AEUGXKBSAA_RTRMADP_3_BRITAIN-BANKS-CYBER-e1644961597348.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=3200&amp;h=1804 3200w" alt="Man typing on keyboard" width="705" height="397"><figcaption dir="auto">How well does your keyboard know you?</figcaption></figure><div dir="ltr">Published <time datetime="2022-02-18T09:00:58.000Z" dir="ltr">February 18, 2022</time></div>On my iPhone, I start typing out a text message and “Helloooo” pops up, a recommendation from Apple. Instead, I type “Hey. What’s up,” but my phone assumes I want to ask “What’s upsetting,” which is wrong and also, somehow, upsetting. The system then suggests three separate emoji instead of the word “up,” none of which make much sense.This doesn’t just happen on my phone. In Google Docs, starting a sentence with “To,” elicits the suggestion “To whom it may concern.” In Gmail, after a woman named Amanda emails me, it rightly knows to suggest starting my reply with “Hey Amanda.”These suggestions are called predictive text and they are ubiquitous on the internet. (In fact, predictive text helped me spell out “ubiquitous” before I could mess it up.) But how did this evolution come about? And what does it mean for the future?

Predictive text is in your email, your documents, and your social media—and it might be making you boring.

Stashed ideas

On my iPhone, I start typing out a text message and “Helloooo” pops up, a recommendation from Apple. Instead, I type “Hey. What’s up,” but my phone assumes I want to ask “What’s upsetting,” which is wrong and also, somehow, upsetting. The system then suggests three separate emoji instead of the word “up,” none of which make much sense.

This doesn’t just happen on my phone. In Google Docs, starting a sentence with “To,” elicits the suggestion “To whom it may concern.” In Gmail, after a woman named Amanda emails me, it rightly knows to suggest starting my reply with “Hey Amanda.”

These suggestions are called predictive text and they are ubiquitous on the internet. (In fact, predictive text helped me spell out “ubiquitous” before I could mess it up.) But how did this evolution come about? And what does it mean for the future?

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How predictive text took over the internet

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The future of typing

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