SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — As one of the key architects of the original Macintosh, programming legend Bill Atkinson is in a good position to make sensible predictions about the future of tomorrow’s computer interfaces.
And he says the future of computers is smartphones with natural language interfaces. We won’t be tapping on our iPhone’s screens, we’ll be talking to them in natural language. And they’ll be talking back.
We’ll wear a tiny video-equipped earpiece that will see, hear and record everything we do. On the other end, in the cloud, will be a virtual personal assistant that will act as a cognitive prosthesis.
“I think what’s going to happen will be driven by the mobile market,” said Atkinson during his talk here at Macworld on future UIs. “The UI for mobile will never be keyboard and mouse.”
Instead, we’ll have a phone in our pocket or purse and will wear an earpiece with a microphone, speaker and camera.
The earpiece will allow us to talk to a virtual personal assistant running in the cloud. We will always be having conversations with our virtual PAs, which will keep us well-informed — they’re jacked into the net. The virtual personal assistant will see, hear and record everything we see and hear.
“You point at a building, the camera will see where you’re pointing, and say, ‘That’s Bank of America.'”
Personal memories will be stored and remembered. Every conversation we’ve had, every place we’ve ever visited, will be stored on the cloud.
“A memory prosthesis will be the killer app of these virtual personal assistants,” Atkinson said.
The technology required is deep natural language understanding, not just speech recognition. And natural language understanding depends on knowledge of both language and how the world works.
Atkinson is 100% convinced that natural language is the computer UI of the future. No doubt about it.
“I can tell you for sure, they’re going to happen,” said Atkinson. “I can’t tell you when.”
Nonetheless, Atkinson doesn’t think it will be long. Certainly within 10 years. The best evidence, he says, is the upcoming episode of Jeopardy featuring an IBM supercomputer.
On February 14, IBM’s DeepQA Project Watson will compete on Jeopardy TV show, listening and answering questions in natural language.
Atkinson thinks it will be a watershed moment.
“When we see computers interacting with a natural language interface, people are going to want it,” he said.
“I’d ask you all to watch Jeopardy on February 14,” he said. “It may be a momentous occasion.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
