{"id":1884,"date":"2011-10-25T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-27T21:18:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T02:18:31","slug":"siri-vs-forget-it-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2011\/10\/25\/siri-vs-forget-it-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Siri vs. Forget It! (1977)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 1977, I was asked to write a short science fiction story with the general theme of ‘memory’ for a new computer magazine named ROM.  In it, I imagined my perfect computer assistant.  It was a wrist watch, with a tiny screen and a voice interface.  You can read the story here on my Henry’s Stories online magazine<\/a>.  It’s short, in two parts, click the Next Part link down below the comments.<\/p>\n

With all the news coverage of the Siri voice assistant on the new iPhone 4S, it occurs to me that there is a lot of common ground between the two devices.  The idea of a voice operated personal assistant device is hardly a new idea, especially in science fiction.  The very first thing Carlos does in the story is make a calendar event, and I bet Siri would do the same task with the same verbal command.  (Unfortunately, I can’t justify a 4S just yet, so I can’t try it out.)<\/p>\n

There are plenty of differences.  In 1977 I couldn’t quite imagine the always-connected world we live in, and that was actually part of the plot.  The wrist watch was also voice specific, more as a security feature than because of any limitation.  The voice recognition was also all in the device, rather than Siri’s server-based method.<\/p>\n

In truth, I want a merger.  I travel in remote areas, so I’d prefer a device-only voice system.  But Siri’s ‘personality’ is better than the one I wrote.  Maybe a wrist watch would be more convenient than a hand-held, but I could wish for something waterproof that rode in my ear, or even embedded under the skin.  The screen output is nice, though, so I could live with either the 4S or wrist watch device. <\/p>\n

Just something all-knowing, with infinite storage, that never misunderstands what I ask for.  That would do nicely.  Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 1977, I was asked to write a short science fiction story with the general theme of ‘memory’ for a new computer magazine named ROM.  In it, I imagined my perfect computer assistant.  It was a wrist watch, with a tiny screen and a voice interface.  You can read the story here on my… Continue reading Siri vs. Forget It! (1977)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[138,139,8,140],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-uo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}