DIGITAL ASSISTANT

The first electronic computers like ENIAC were too big to fit into an ordinary room. They were programmed by hooking wires to various places on the frame. By the sixties computers had shrunk enough that they could fit into one room. Technicians programmed through computer languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, and PASCAL.

With the advent of personal computers in the late seventies, you did not have to be a technician to use a computer, and ordinary users did not program their machines. Early PCs used keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl + S to save a document and Shift + Insert to paste something into a document. It wasn’t long before icons and computer mice made it even easier to operate a computer.

The latest development, something that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called “the next big thing,” is chatbots or electronic digital assistants. The first one of these was Siri, who came with the iPhone. You didn’t even have to use the virtual keyboard. All you had to do was ask a question or give a direction in plain English, assuming that English was your language. The digital assistant could understand commands in over 20 languages and give answers in any of these languages.

Soon Microsoft came out with Cortana, a digital assistant that accompanied Windows 10. Cortana could tell you who won the World Series in 1975, open your calendar, make appointments for you, or even send an email for you. All of this is done with just voice commands.

One of the latest devices comes from Amazon.com. Echo is a cylindrical device that doesn’t even look like a computer. Echo has a voice that is called Alexa. Alexa can adjust the thermostat or turn lights on or off. It can also answer your questions, just like Siri or Cortana.

We can’t forget Google Now, a digital assistant that is available for Android as well as Apple devices. This assistant is also available on any PC. You just go to Google and say “OK Google” or tap on the microphone icon and say what you want. Google Now is very fast and very good at hearing and understanding your request. You can ask Google Now things like: “In what play does Marc Antony give a funeral oration?” Or “In what movie does Clark Gable say, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’?” The assistant quickly comes up with answers to these questions or tells you how far it is from Boston to New York or anything else you want to know.

Computers keep getting smaller and more powerful at the same time and also easier to use. You don’t need to know a computer language to communicate with your machine; you just talk to it, just as you would to any intelligent friend. It is like having a companion with encyclopedic knowledge. You can hold the device in your hand and ask it anything.

This revolution is still going on. Google is working on a newer version of Google Now. It promises to be even better than the present one. The engineers who first developed Siri have created a new digital assistant they call Viv. Viv is not available yet, but in its test run in May, a group of engineers ordered a pizza by talking to it. They just told the assistant where they wanted the pizza to come from. They kept changing the order, adding toppings and taking them off. It was the kind of thing that would have confused most human operators. But Viv had no problem with the order. A short while later the pizza as ordered was delivered to the engineers. All of this was done without touching a phone or a keyboard, doing a Google search, or downloading an app from the pizza maker.

I agree with Satya Nadella that digital assistants are the next big thing.” If you don’t believe me, just ask Siri or Cortana or Alexa or Google Now.