Talking to Computers

Predicting the Future

Forecasting and scenario planning try to predict future by using data and wisdom from the past. Predicting the business climate of the future allows organizations to make changes to their current strategy. Any business that fails to adapt to changes is guaranteed to fail. Understanding the current disrupting forces and future market demands will enable an organization to innovate better. Royal Dutch/Shell used scenario planning during oil crisis to understand forces that were causing the disruption and how it should adapt for the future (Ramirez, et. al., 2002). Scenario planning is one of the strategies that could be used by businesses to predict plausible futures, best and worst-case future scenarios or the optimal situation that should be created in the future. Scenario planning uses iterative sessions to extract knowledge from diverse set of induvial from an organization to predict the future.

Talking to Computers

            Twenty six years ago, Nicholas Negroponte, director of MIT's Media Lab, in an email to Wired, predicted that in another 15 years human beings will be talking to the computers instead of using graphical interfaces. The speech recognition technology was in its infancy in 1994 but Negroponte was envisioning about not sitting right in front of a computer but talking to it like a human being. Back in 1994 Negroponte was able to understand the forces that would impact the future of speech recognition. The intonations used in a human conversation could express different feelings like sarcasm, compassion, exasperation, etc. Negroponte suggested that technology should be sophisticated enough to understand human emotions in speech. With advancement in algorithms, machine learning and AI, today, computers can understand human feelings much better than 26 years ago. Another force that impacted successful recognition of speech was the number of words that could be successfully stored in the memory of the computer. With advancement in computer processing speed, memory, internet, cloud computing, machine learning and AI, speech recognition has become a reality. Today we can use applications like Siri and Alexa and speak to computers, from a distance just like Negroponte envisioned twenty six years ago.

References

Ramírez R., Churchhouse S., Palermo A, Hoffmann J. (2020). Using Scenario Planning to Reshape Strategy. MIT Sloan Management Review.

Negroponte N. (1994). Talking to Computers: Time for a New Perspective. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/1994/02/negroponte-9/