Speech is the new AJAX? (The Future of Man-Machine Interface)

The next step in web computing is definitely machine-to-machine interfaces where all appliances are connected to the web and expose interfaces for communicating with each other. It also means the the next step in web is taking interaction outside of the browser and enabling it anywhere anytime and in this respect speech should be one of main interaction interfaces on the next leap of "web" applications... (Speech is the new AJAX?)