I don’t know if they do this every holiday season, but I’ve noticed that Nuance Communications is pushing its flagship product, Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software, especially hard to the consumer market.

Dragon’s been around for a long while now, at least a decade to my recollection. And not only does it remain a niche product, the entire field of voice-activated computer/digital input has yet to take off, despite steady improvement in recognition technology. What that tells me is that, despite the assumed advantages in bypassing a keyboard/mouse, the majority of users aren’t clamoring to use their mouths instead of their hands when interacting with their computers.

That’s a bit surprising. For decades, predictions about technological trending assumed that tech interactions would evolve to accommodate natural human communicative expressions. Pop-cultural markers like “Star Trek”, for instance, routinely featured computer systems that functioned and responded to natural, conversant voice commands. Clunky keyboards, which came about as input devices only because there was no better alternative in early computer design, were supposed to be abandoned. What’s more, standard notebooks and desktops ship with built-in webcams and microphones, obviating the need to buy separate peripherals. It would seem that the situation is right for a mass migration to speech-based computer operation.

But that’s not happening, and there’s no sign that things are trending that way. People are well-used to tapping keys for their onscreen interactions, and they’re not clamoring for an alternative. That extends to mobile devices as well, another platform where you’d think voice-origined input would win out. It’s practically paradoxical.

Part of it is that, despite over a decade of development, Dragon and similar software is far from flawless. There’s still a learning curve in “training” the software to recognize the cadences of your voice, so the advantages are deferred. Even after that, it can be a clunky affair. Over the years, I’ve met only a couple of converts to speech-input software, and I can’t say they were any more productive than the rest of us keyboard-clickers. It’s just not worth it.

And ultimately, the surest sign that speech-recog input isn’t the wave of the future is that no one’s making it a built-in aspect of computer operating systems. Nuance easily can be undercut if Microsoft and Apple made voice-command a basic functionality. While both Windows and OSX both sport some capability in that area, it’s shunted off deep into the system settings — hardly front-and-center. Again, paired with the standard audio-visual hardware that computers ship with today, you’d think the built-in OS would take advantage of a new mode of human-machine interaction. But it ain’t happening.

I’m sure at some point, user behavior will shift, and the keyboard will become a secondary input device. We’ll be commanding our computers via voice, eye movements, and even brain-waves. But as of today, we can freely keep our mouths shut while in front of a screen.