Is this a silent revolution by Apple?
Today Apple announced new products at an event called “Let´s talk iPhone”. Many people expected the new iPhone5 to be launched with a completely new design. Instead the guys at Cupertino launched the iPhone 4S (Is the name a joke?).
But the real revolution tonight was not any new hardware announcement but a new software feature called SIRI. This could be a change in paradigm - similar to the gesture recognition this could revolutionize the way we interact with machines. This is the introduction of “artificial intelligence” to the masses. SIRI is your “humble” personal assistant. Have a look at the SIRI videos or the keynote presentation of today at Apple´s website and you understand what you mean.
But there is something very mysterious about this. Last year we discussed with architectural design students the above shown video prototype from 1987. To me it seemed that the introduced Knowledge Navigator was a very early prototype study of what we know today as an iPad. But not only the touchscreen and gestures are shown in this early prototype but also the concept of SIRI! If you listen from 1:25min onwards you will see the professor interacting with the device by speech and he is asking questions that the navigator is analyzing and answering. He is asking that 5 years ago there was a certain study published about ……
The computer answers with the name of the author and study and says that the article was published in 2006.
2006 + 5 years makes it 2011. What an insight about the future Apple had back in 1987. It´s almost scary!
