This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Dr. S. Ansari
Bio: Internet professional and pioneer
Area of Expertise: Research Scientist/Illuminator
Topic: Communication
Headline: The way we will interact with the World
Nutshell: Computers are bound to change in a fundamental way!
Vision:Do you realise that we are still using 19th century technology to communicate with our machines? The typewriter was invented then and ever since has dominated the way humans put thought to paper and to communicate it to others. Some of the penmanship I come across today is not worthy of a 6th grader! This must change!
As technology improves, more people will want to turn to a more natural way to communicate. For instance, I am using my natural handwriting to communicate this text. Using sophisticated character recognition, my Tab PC turns my handwriting to text that can be understood by the operating system. I even used my voice-recognition software to dictate a whole document recently and it worked!
When I attend meetings and conferences amongst my colleagues, many are intrigued by the ease with which my Tab PC can read and interpret my handwriting. The technology is still in its infancy, but it is bound to become a standard communication tool in the future It’s just natural to use your hand or voice!
Humanity is very lonesome, very individualistic, and very deterministic – more than ever before. Yet this is not in human nature! Today, many sit at a desk behind a screen. The need to communicate has boiled down to using our fingers. We tend to use email more than the phone! Maybe because we have more courage in relating our thoughts in written words, more than a face-to-face encounter! It boils down to, if we are not typing away at our computer we are not working in the eyes of our managers. If we spend just as much time on the phone "communicating," we are wasting time! Humanity has got to turn back to its roots of communicating naturally, if we are ever to stimulate the mind and open our minds to fresh ideas, inspiration, spontaneity! And here technology can help us in achieving that goal, more than ever before:? We should consider ourselves lucky to truly be living in such interesting times!
Date Submitted: January 11, 2005