Overhyped Innovations (was Re: OS's In ROM's (was: Re: Mac Classic prob (was Macintoshes..

From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
Date: Sat Jun 27 16:03:51 1998

On Sat, 27 Jun 1998, Doug Yowza wrote:

> BTW, I enjoy collecting over-hyped innovations that never quite caught on
> in the way they were supposed to: Bubbles. Pen-based computers. Touch
> screens. Wireless networks. Bob. MSX. Robots. AI. Home automation.
> The Z8000. The iAPX432. Parallel processing. Voice recognition.
>
> What did I miss?

Its not what you missed, its what you included!

Voice recognition?? This is still evolving and has just become viable in
the last year or so. It works in a more than limited fashion, and is only
a few years away from being contrinuous without putting limitations on
how the speaker talks. Current state-of-the-art is speaker independent
with word dictionaries in the thousands to tens-of-thousands range. Right
now I'd say it is pretty much a reality. Check out the computer telephony
stuff.

Wireless networks exist today. Robots are in use in many applications in
many different fields. MSX was a standard that was around for a time in
Europe and Japan. Thankfully it didn't catch on in the U.S. or stick
around, but like CP/M it kinda faded. Home automation is an evolving art
as well. Voice activated home automation is here, but the good stuff is
still around the corner.

Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Sat Jun 27 1998 - 16:03:51 BST

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