She got legs
She knows how to use them

@stavvers
an episode about Picard accidentally requesting a live ocelot would have made a better episode than about half of the holodeck hijinks episodes.
That said ... in 1962 IBM demonstrated a computerized voice recognition system that could recognize 16 distinct words. By the 1980s, much better systems, but still notoriously error-prone and quite limited, existed in several university labs. It's possible one of the writers had read about these, or maybe even had direct experience.
sometimes when Counselor Troi and Captain Picard put in their drink orders at the same time, the replicator goes all Tuvix on them
@stavvers On the other hand, it (and all the other voice-activated stuff) knows when you're talking to it. Otherwise, replicators would be spewing out food any time someone near the input said anything food-related.
"So, I ordered some gakh once and..."
Replicator: DING!
"No, I don't want gakh..."
Replicator: DING!
"Look, you steaming pile of dingo's kidneys..."
Replicator: DING!
(At this point, stuff is spilling out onto the crewperson's pants.)
(Later, after showering and changing their uniform, they actually DO try to get dinner, only to be told they've exceeded their caloric allowance and need an exemption from Medical.)
@LizardSF @stavvers Back in the 90's, the Nitpicker's Guild used to observe that the Enterprise doors functioned similarly. Someone gets up to leave Ten Forward (or wherever), and the doors open while they're still practically halfway across the room...
...unless they have to stop and say something dramatic before leaving. In which case the doors would remain closed while the crewmember walks up to them, stops, turns back, says the thing, and only when they're done do the doors open.
@stavvers
(Like, the speech-to-text system used by replicators is probably shared with comm badges and holodeck controls, both of which log everything & make it searchable in the ship's computer, so literally everything Picard says on the ship needs to be understandable by these systems for recordkeeping purposes.
Which is sort of horrifying now that I come to think about it...)
@R4_Unit @stavvers @virtualbri
"And he sat. He told the Nutro-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting the milk in before the tea so it wouldn’t get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the East India Trading Company."
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
@stavvers Going back and watching the TNG and DS9 crew interact with voice activation, tablets, and variable displays is wild.
LCARS. an interface that changes as you need it, concieved of in 1989, when most products had push-buttons that did just the button thing.
This was only 5 years after the Macintosh GUI was introduced.
PADD was 21 years before iPAD