Star Trek first aired in the 1960s. It presented a futuristic view of life in the 23rd century. Humans are exploring the galaxy in starships. In the show, computers are almost alive. The interface is not a keyboard. It's speech!
The latest version of the iPhone now has a new, improved Siri. You can actually address your virtual assistant from a distance of about five feet. This review from the NY Times, explains the evolution:
As David Pierce wrote recently in Wired, voice recognition and artificial intelligence are getting so good so quickly that it isn’t really a stretch to imagine that talking to computers will soon become one of the signature ways we interact with them. The new Siri is paving the way to what you might call “ambient computing” — a future in which robotic assistants are always on hand to answer questions, take notes, take orders or otherwise function as auxiliary brains to whom you might offload many of your chores.
Picture the “Star Trek” computer, but instead of powering a starship, it’s turning off the basement lights, finding you a good movie on Netflix and, after listening in on a fight between you and your spouse, reminding you to buy flowers the next day. It will be slightly creepy and completely helpful — and it’s coming faster than you think.
All of these improvements are changing the way that we interface with our digital assistants:
The ubiquity of voice-controlled assistants changes the way we interact with them. When Siri and other voice systems were new, they seemed gimmicky. Nobody quite knew what to do with them, and interactions veered toward the awkward. But the more assistants there are, and the more you use them, the more natural they feel — and that means the more you’ll use them, feeding the cycle.
Ironically, the Star Trek computer is not just fantasy. It is actually becoming a design goal!
In fact, for years now, Google’s top search engineers have been describing the “Star Trek” computer as their vision of the future of search.
“The ‘Star Trek’ computer is not just a metaphor that we use to explain to others what we’re building,” Amit Singhal, the head of Google’s search team, once told me. “It is the ideal that we’re aiming to build — the ideal version done realistically.”
Here is the link to the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/technology/personaltech/iphone-6s-hands-free-siri-is-an-omen-of-the-future.html?_r=0
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