Can you read your own handwriting? If so, congratulations. In this keyboard-powered age, 95 per cent of people cannot decipher their handwriting without the aid of a police graphologist, a psychic and some psychotropic drugs. (The other 5 per cent rely on remembering what they meant.)
How then could any technology contrive to turn our scrawl into intelligible words?
The task looks all the more daunting when various variables come into play. Even that hallmark of human identity, the signature, can fluctuate wildly. If yours is anything like mine, it changes in accordance with stress levels, sobriety and a slew of external factors such as the position of the moon in relation to Mercury.
But the technology meant to do the job does exist. It is called handwriting recognition, or HR, that abbreviation also insultingly applied to people.
The technology 'works' in a variety of ways, depending on who is pushing it. But essentially it converts what you have written into digitised pictures, then interprets them through fancy techniques such as logic-based shape recognition.
Typically, HR mimics old-fashioned handwriting 'technology' so familiar we scarcely register it. HR physically consists of a stylus (an electronic Biro) and a touch-sensitive surface provided by a tablet PC, personal digital assistant (PDA) or other handheld device.