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In this humorous collection of essays, exercises and puzzles, author Bruce Balentine offers a satirical insider s perspective of the IVR and speech recognition industry. "It's Better to Be a Good Machine than a Bad Person" provides a backstage tour of the science of ergonomics and the philosophy of user interface design, making a strong case for predictability and usability over delight as a primary design goal. In his fun, easy-to-read style, Balentine points out that Jetsonian thinking which has predominantly influenced phone-based self-service interface design for the past decade and a half is on the way out. He stresses that the attempt to create humanlike applications has been the root cause of the abysmal performance in spoken interfaces that we all experience regularly.