Microsoft's Mundie Sees a Future In Spatial Computing 89
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the i-can-only-see-the-future-with-my-magic-8-ball dept.
from the i-can-only-see-the-future-with-my-magic-8-ball dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie explained that he sees the industry evolving into 'spatial computing,' and he envisions a 3-D virtual world populated by virtual presences, using a combination of client and cloud services. 'In a few months, the compay plans to test a new virtual reception assistant in some of its campus buildings. The assistant, which takes the form of an avatar, helps schedule shuttle reservations to get people to various locations across the 10-million-square-foot Redmond, Wash., campus. The system includes array microphones and natural language processing by which the avatar listens to the subjects and then interacts with them in real time. The system has been programmed to differentiate people by their clothing. Someone in a suit, for instance, would more likely be a visitor and not a potential shuttle rider.'"
How's the speech recognition? (Score:4, Insightful)
And would we be silly to assume that they've made some improvements to their speech recognition software since it was demoed in vista [youtube.com]?
db
Voice Interaction is Overrated. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, he's predicting basically the same thing as every post-1985 Cyberpunk author. That's not really a story.
I would have liked to read more about the visual recognition software that the summary mentioned, but the article was (predictably) short on details.
Now, about the voice interaction part of that software... I don't really understand why someone would want to slow themselves down to the speed of speech (unless they're blind). It takes a minute for someone to hear information that they can read in a matter of seconds. I think this is mostly flash.
Re:Voice Interaction is Overrated. (Score:2, Insightful)
Visual recognition is actually quite far along now. Just ask Big Brother, seriously.
let's swap predictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
But not in the next 50 years. I would love if my computer could serve as an omniscient "super secretary". If I could, for example, just say to it "I want to go to Chicago on Friday, book airline tickets, coach, no connections, in the evening, lowest cost. Return flight next Friday around the same time. Also reserve taxi to and from the airport, and a room the same hotel as last time I went there." Or let it find you a new job, given your experience and a list of available positions. Or ask for a concise summary on relative merits of top 7.1 home theater sound systems under $1K. Etc, etc. The list is endless.
This is not to say that Mundie has a "vision" - my impression of him is that he will tell you anything to justify Microsoft paying him $1M a year in combined compensation. However, you can't deny the appeal of a truly natural user interface.
Mac killed artificial intelligence (Score:2, Insightful)
you're giving too much credit (Score:2, Insightful)
I think blaming Apple is giving them too much credit. There were half a dozen companies offering machines with graphical user interfaces around the time the Mac came out. Apple wasn't the first and they weren't the most successful one either.
What I really blame Apple for is not doing a better job on the software architecture. The original Mac's toolbox copied much of Xerox's user interface apperance, but almost nothing of the elegant architecture. Even the NeXT machine that came out a few years later was a poor imitation of Xerox's Smalltalk environment.