Jetstar’s Jess Welcomes Us To The Future

Where we’re all a little bit slimy

At least until recently, talking to computers required a special language. Even an apparently simple task like a web search rewarded users who could think in terms of keywords instead of sentences. This is not how we will interact with computers in the future. How do I know? Because of Star Trek, obviously. On the Enterprise, Captain Picard doesn’t interact with the ship’s computer by yelling out keywords, he talks in complete sentences to a computer capable of understanding context and, when it’s not sure it’s got the drift, asking questions.

Now, the conversations Captain Picard is having aren’t exactly with the computer itself so much as with a kind of virtual assistant, an anthropomorphic program capable of translating between the contextual complexity of human language and the binary force of the machine brain. This is a critical link to the future and one that may determine the ultimate state of our relationship with technology. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, a blandly utopian fantasy, the virtual assistant sounds like a retirement-age librarian – calm, knowledgeable and utterly reliable. But in other versions of the future the virtual assistant can embody our worst fears about computers. Think HAL 9000 – menacingly creepy, and later homicidal.