Future
The ever-growing processing power of modern computers is used to present the user with an interface that requires minimal computer skills to operate. Modern software often utilizes buttons, icons and elaborate pictographic interfaces to try to achieve a high level of usability. Most of the time people use computers, they do not realize that they are doing so. (Examples: ATMs, car navigation systems, mobile phones, microwave ovens...)
One of the major goals in computer engineering is the construction of a natural language interface, possibly with speech recognition, body language recognition and automatic visualisation. This would eliminate the need for computer literacy in everyday work and life in areas where such machines are available. An example of a futuristic Natural Language Interface can be found throughout the Star Trek series, where characters simply tell the computer what they want using ordinary English.
Read more about this topic: Computer Literacy
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“The power we exert over the future behavior of our children is enormous. Even after they have left home, even after we have left the world, there will always be part of us that will remain with them forever.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)