Back in 1987 I got my hands on a Mac. Sitting in front of me were two products that I immediately fell in love with: Hypercard and MacPaint. I felt like I could do almost anything with those two apps.
Shortly after getting that first Mac, I saw this concept video by Apple. It was a concept called the Knowledge Navigator. Please watch it if you haven’t already, it’s about 5 minutes long.
It basically introduces the idea of a tablet, a search engine, AI, a voice interface and facetime. And that was in 1987!
Siri and Alexa are a bit rough right now. It needs better natural language comprehension, better accuracy, speed, 3rd party support, & personalization —so these things can distinguish between users.
But we it certainly feels like we are on the eve of seeing the promise of the Knowledge Navigator delivered.
And that’s fantastic.