Yeah, the tech has been in use for awhile but (as usual) Apple found a way to apply it in a way that gets people to use the technology. People haven't used voice recognition software because it has been cumbersome and annoying and rarely works like you'd like it to work. But Siri has the potential to overcome that in time as it is refined (and even now, it's bloody good). Before casually dismissing it, I'd spend a day or two with a phone that has it equipped. The key is that in many cases, it's actually faster to use Siri than to go find whatever you're looking for yourself. That in itself is a huge hurdle to overcoming peoples' hesitation to use voice recognition.
A lot of people also casually dismissed capacitive touchscreens in 2006. We all know how that turned out once that tech was complemented by multi-touch, the app store, and gestures. In most cases, one thing doesn't entirely change a device. It's a combination of seemingly "meh" tech put together that makes something work. It's rumored that for iOS6, Apple is putting in place a facial recognition system. Add that in with Siri and they're well on their way to minimizing physical input into their devices for simple tasks. That's a pretty big step in where tech is leading us.
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