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:
“Everything I do is done within sight of the Führer, so that my faults or mistakes are never hidden from him. I do my very utmost to live and act in such a manner that the Führer should remain satisfied with me; I am hard-working; but whether I shall always be able to cope with the tasks entrusted to me in the future as well, is an open question.”
—Martin Bormann (1900–1945)
“Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A fixed image of the future is in the worst sense ahistorical.”
—Juliet Mitchell (b. 1940)