Okay, we found this snippet on another blog, and we spent at least 30 minutes reading directly from that blog’s source before we could raise our jaws that had dropped and bounced off the floor a few times. We, like our colleagues whose tweet we caught, hope this is an early practical joke.

Nokia, on their site blog, Nokia Conversations, actually posted notice that they have been developing a voice replacement programme – no, not voice recognition programme but a voice replacement programme – that works with Near Field Communications.

The Nokia Hello program completely bypasses human voice interaction: Tap two like-programmed mobiles together, and the smartphones say hello to each other.

Honest. That’s what their blog reads.

The Nokia blog further states:

“The team working on the project estimate that the need for speech interactions with work colleagues could be eliminated entirely by 2015. Excellent news for those working in multilingual environments or who despise their workmates.”

A Nokia engineer actually goes on record with his statement that technicians

“waste”

…two hours each day in verbal communications. By bypassing that human interaction, productivity can increase by 85 percent.

And the engineer was serious.

We won’t even touch the issue of how long it would take to programme a Morse Code-like interactive feature to determine which non-verbal communication set to use in any given situation, nor will we explore the potential, over-time damage to phones or the sheer idiocy involved in the concept: It takes longer to stop what someone is doing, reach for a mobile, activate the Hello program, tap phones, return the smartphone to its normal resting place, then re-gather up work in progress than it would to just nod or mumble.

Indeed, that’s technological genius at work, readers. What do you think? Does someone have too much time on one’s hands, or are we simply in the wrong line of work?