The future of information technology is exciting. As we approach the twenty first century, experts in the filed hypothesize that there will be more "natural communication" between humans and computers. In order for people and computers to collaborate we must "interface" or communicate as efficiently and naturally as possible. Interfaces are important because that is where people come into contact with the machinery of the Information Marketplace. Some experts, such as Michael Dertouzos at MIT, argue that the Information Marketplace will not reach its full potential until the interaction between humans and machines become closer to human-to-human communication.
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1. Besides keyboards and mice, today's interface devices include trackballs, joysticks, hand held styluses for handwriting and drawing, microphones that pick up speech, and both still and video cameras for images. There are many other devices being developed around the world. Scientists and engineers are currently working on gloves that let the computer know the precise movement of your fingers. Experts are also working on glasses and head tracking helmets with mechanical, electromagnetic and optical gadgets that track eye and head movements so that the computer knows where you are looking. 2. Complete body suits that convey the motions of the torso and limbs are not readily available but they have been built (in clumsy forms) and will undoubtedly appear in the future. 3 These same devices will feed information back to you, flooding your senses with spoken information, three dimensional video, audio and "bodyo"- tactile impressions that will range from the tickle of a cats' whiskers to being driven into the back of your chair. These state of the art interfaces will forever alter the way we work and "re-create" in the near future. These new interfaces may allow individuals to work simultaneously with colleagues around the globe, order food from a French waiter in French, even though you don't know the language and even take dance lessons at home from an instructor across town. The application possibilities for these interface technologies is mind boggling.
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The ability to speak to our computers is a critical part of the interface we will end up with. This will occur for two reasons: a. speaking is natural - the majority of the time we communicate with one another simply by speaking. b. Speech is the interface technology most ready to explode for practical applications. It is clear to everyone involved that developing a system that enables computers to understand speech will dramatically expand technologies role in our daily lives. The applications for a language recognition system would be far reaching. 4. For example, a navigational-aid program in the car could help you find your way through an unfamiliar city as you drive. Another language recognition system on your home computer could guide you through a maze of potentially useful services. It would be convenient for speech systems to act as travel agents assisting consumers to book flights or make car and hotel reservations.
5. A phone system that translates language is also within the reach of speech-understanding technology. The system would work like this: say you want to call from the United States to an associate in South Africa. After you connected with your party, you would speak into your phone in English and you would immediately hear a computer generated paraphrase of what you said, to ensure the computer understood you. At the same time, the machine would translate and present your sentence to the other party. If the computer did not understand, you would hear the incorrect paraphrase hit an abort button and try to convey your message with a different sentence.
Speech understanding systems could well dominate tomorrow's interfaces. Developing a proficient system has been an engineering challenge however. For decades computers have been notoriously poor at comprehending ordinary human speech. Many skeptics have written off the possibility of genuine conversation between people and machines. Engineers, scientists and linguists are still analyzing the problem however.