This is what you have:
But this is what you
want:
OK, I know you don't
literally have that old Xerox computer system pictured above, unless your
spare room is a data-processing museum. It dates from the early 1970s.
What you see at the top
is not only a quaintly rudimentary processor, but also one of the very first
mice ("mouses" is also correct, my Internet dictionary says). The
prototype rollerball mouse was constructed in 1972 by inventor Bill English.
It provided the user with a simple, effective way of interacting with the
computer screen, and it was so perfectly functional that it hasn't much
changed in 40 years. Although mine is now optical rather than mechanical, I
still use a mouse all the time.
The second photo is of
course of Tony Stark – AKA Ironman, from the wildly successful movie series
of the same name – as he plays with his futuristic computer setup called
Jarvis (actually an acronym for "Just A Rather Very Intelligent
System").
The point is that four
decades on, we're interacting with our machines using a technology that
predates even the term "personal computer," which wasn't coined
until 1977. Trackballs, trackpads, even touchscreens are just outgrowths of
the original.
Question is, since the
mouse does such an admirable job of performing the mundane tasks associated
with what most of us mostly use our computers for, do we really need
something like Jarvis as a replacement? Most likely, no. If we were
scientists trying to improve upon Einstein or military strategists looking at
deployments across the planet, then it might make sense to be surrounded by
holographic virt-screens that float in the air and are manipulated with hand
gestures.
But for home or the
average office? Well, let's just say that while very few of us really need a
Jarvis, it sure would be fun to have one.
In any event, even if we
were as wealthy as Tony Stark, the Jarvis would still be just a pipe dream.
We can't go to the Apple store and buy one today, and we won't be able to in
the near future. Nevertheless, there are some Stark-caliber smart
people out in the real world who are rethinking the computer/human interface,
and they're doing some interesting things. Change is coming.
The easiest modification to make is to add voice recognition, and that's
been around for a while. Dragon Dictate, the first such commercial product,
debuted in 1990, at a budget-busting price of $9,000. Much better was
Dragon's NaturallySpeaking software – which did pretty well with basic speech
to text, though it took a while to train – which first appeared in 1997, at a
still-costly $695. Microsoft and Apple built speech recognition and voice
commands into Vista and Mac OS X, respectively, but they never really caught
on.
Not much has been done since, except in the mobile space, where voice
recognition is particularly apt. Google launched an app for the iPhone in
late 2008 that linked voice queries to the browser. More recently, in October
of 2011, Apple presented us with Siri, the "virtual personal
assistant" first implemented on the iPhone 4S.
Siri is a jump ahead in that it doesn't simply recognize words; it enlists
powerful, Cloud-based artificial intelligence and statistical analysis that
help it to decipher the probable meaning behind a user's questions – however
garbled they may be – and to deliver appropriate responses. It also learns
more about you as time goes on and gets better at understanding your personal
idiosyncrasies.
Naturally, would-be imitators have popped up here and there in the
marketplace and, while Siri remains the gold standard, nothing in the tech
world is forever. In the near future, for example, Siri may have to defend
its position from Sherpa for Android, launched in April of this year. Sherpa
is taking dead aim not only at smartphones, but also at wearable computers
such as Google Glass.
That is, if Google itself doesn't co-opt the space first. It has
introduced its enhanced voice search app for iOS and Android, and is
extending the feature to Chrome for desktops and laptops as well.
Having the ability to make voice connection with the Internet is a
no-brainer as far as mobile devices are concerned. It's the natural thing to
do. But will we talk to our home computers too, for all of the functions that
lie beyond speech to text? Eventually we probably will, provided we can
overcome the natural embarrassment of treating a machine like a living
entity. Google is already pushing us in that direction with the Chrome voice
search feature.
But that's not all. There are some other interesting technologies in
development that seek to redefine the human/computer interface.
Touch-free interactions are one way to go. They may face some headwinds,
since touchscreens are all the rage at the moment, and Windows 8 was designed
with touch controls in mind. But some serious innovations are on the way.
One company, Leap Motion, has designed a device that grants a fingertip
the power to control Win 8 without the need to physically touch anything. You
can pull up apps, surf the Net, all the
usual stuff. But you can also make
music, explore Google Earth, or draw
and paint. The user is essentially an orchestra conductor, but without a
fixed score. Awesome. Leap Motion's unit is scheduled to ship on July 22 and
will retail for $79.99.
Thalmic Labs has just
raised $14.5 million in a private financing to allow it to join the fray. Its
entrant is the MYO, an armband worn just below the
elbow on either arm that detects the electrical activity produced by the
user's muscles and uses that to control and interact with various
technologies. Move fingers, hand, wrist, or arm to surf the Web,
control the background music, play games, deliver a slide-deck lecture, fly
your quadcopter, or pilot a robotic four-wheel vehicle. MYO touts its
advantage over the Leap as being non-location-specific. That is, you can be
walking away from the computer and still control it. The MYO is accepting
preorders at a $149 price point, and has so far taken over 30,000. Those
signing up won't be charged until the unit ships, but when that will be
remains up in the air.
Neither of these says anything about offering a virtual keyboard, which is
probably to the good. Stabbing at the air to make words sounds pretty
awkward.
Next there is the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a head-mounted stereoscopic, 3D,
low-latency virtual reality display that immerses the user in whatever he or
she is doing. At present, it's game-centric, but future Internet applications
are likely to be pursued. It exists only in prototype form, but Oculus is
raising money through Kickstarter to help speed it into production.
Nearly everyone's heard of Google Glass by now, which we wrote about in
our April
25 edition of the Daily Dispatch. It's being field tested by a
coterie of volunteers, with general release expected some time next year.
Oblong Industries' g-speak™
is probably the closest thing yet to Jarvis. Employing a pair of special
gloves, it allows the user to do a wide range of gesture-controlled things.
Especially cool are the ability to transfer virtual objects from one screen
to another and the provision for collaborative work. It's around today, but don't
look for this one in stores anytime soon, though. G-speak, according to the
company, is used "to address high-value, real-time, big-data, and
big-workflow challenges in applications such as military simulation,
logistics and supply chain management, and energy grid management." Not
the sorts of challenges you're likely to encounter in your living room.
You can, however, sample the possibilities with Oblong's Greenhouse ecosystem,
which offers manipulation controlled simultaneously by a Leap and a Kinect.
Speaking of which…
Sometime this fall, probably in November, Microsoft will commercially
launch the Xbox One, which had a "reveal" on May 21 and was fully
demoed at the E3 Convention this week.
The Xbox One aspires to be the first all-in-one entertainment center,
integrating a game-playing console with controllers for everything we enjoy
that comes in the form of digital information, including broadcast TV; cable
programming; CDs and DVDs; streamed music and video; and Internet activities,
including Web surfing, YouTube, Skype, social media, and so on. Switching
from one to another will be instant and seamless.
Additionally, a Kinect (version 2.0) will be an integral part of the
system. The Kinect, introduced in late 2010, has been a modest success for
Microsoft, with some 20 million units sold as of the end of last year. It's a
sophisticated motion sensor that permits the user to become the game
controller, through a wide range of body movements. At this point, though,
the Kinect is probably more famous for the huge number of hacks for which
it's served as the centerpiece, from assisting with surgery to piloting a
shopping cart that follows wheelchair-bound shoppers around.
As an Xbox One component, the Kinect will make things easy not just for
gamers, but for someone using any one of the inputs involved, via either
gestures or voice commands (saying "Xbox On" fires it up, even when
it's in sleep mode). The potato will never have to detach from the couch.
Whether the Xbox One catches on as the next-gen game console – and it's
going to get some stiff competition from Sony's Playstation 4 – Microsoft has
begun sprinting flat out toward a goal that its engineers have playfully nicknamed
"Home 2.0." The company envisions interconnected wall screens and
Kinects in virtually every room, and remote control of every appliance and
system in the house with an outstretched hand. It's already put together an
"Envisioning
Center," where employees develop and prototype ideas that could be
used by consumers in the next five to ten years.
Is that the way we want to live, cocooned in an electronic environment
responsive to our every whim?
Perhaps... perhaps not.
But it seems certain that the way in which we communicate with our
computer is going to change, and soon.
[Ed. note: With new ways of computer interaction coming fast, some small
companies with cutting-edge technology will surely rise to the top... or get
bought out by the big boys. Just the kind of high-reward
companies that we recommend each month in Casey Extraordinary Technology.]
Bits & Bytes
The iOS 7 (Wired)
For those waiting for the next big thing from Apple, Monday of this week
was, as Wired put it, "nerd Christmas." The new iOS 7
arrived, and Wired called it a "radical redesign of Apple's
mobile experience." Check out all the new features.
Bringing Sexy to the Freight Industry? (The
Next Web)
No, it doesn't involve making those silhouettes on 18-wheelers' mudflaps
more explicit. It's just about FreightOS, a new company bent on dragging the
freight/cargo industry, kicking and screaming, into the 21st
century. Says CEO Zvi Schreiber: this is "simply the equivalent of
Expedia/Orbitz/Kayak for the shipment of goods rather than people."
The End of the Game Console? (CNET)
While Microsoft and Sony battle at the E3 Conference over favorable
publicity for their new gaming systems, one observer calls both of these
consoles "lumbering dinosaurs." See if you agree.
Fly Me Some Squid (The Guardian)
Finally, for our whimsical app of the week, the hands-down winner was this
"mobile" delivery system employed at a London sushi restaurant.
