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:
“The “second sight” possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don’t wear trousers.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Bobby read his future in women; his girls were omens, changes in the weather, and he’d sit all night in the Gentleman Loser waiting for the season to lay a new face down in front of him like a card.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)