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:
“Although I’m trying very hard
To sound unlike a birthday card,
That’s all this is: so you may find it
Full of all that lies behind it
Admiration; friendship too;
And hope that in the future you
Reap ever richer revenue.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again ... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)