alt Hacker News> Turns out that all of the things you listed as examples are stuff that most consumers don’t actually want or will use.
I've never understood this obsession with trying to invent the talking ship computer from Star Trek TNG. The purpose of the talking computer in the series was not to be a "cool 24th century technology advancement". It was a plot device to keep the story going and explain things to the audience. Having a voice conversation with a computer is terrible, imprecise, plodding UX. It's not a good interface, it's not a good invention, it's not good technology. Yet $billions are being spent to try to invent it.
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You don't have to do it all the time as your primary interface. My wife asks Siri questions all the time while she's busy. "Siri, what's the time?", "Siri what will the temperature be in four hours?" etc. It's not "terrible", it's pretty smart.
I exclusively use Siri to start timers and alarms. The UX for voice for some actions can actually be the best UX for something.
Disagree. The TNG computer was used via voice input when it was efficient to do so, which is exactly how it should be. There were plenty of computer consoles, laptops, and tricorders/phone-like devices that were also used, especially with certain types of tasks. The crew could technically fly the ship and fire weapons via voice commands, but that only happened occasionally, in situations where it made sense. Also, when Picard wants to record himself playing a musical instrument, saying “Computer, begin recording” is simply convenient. It serves no purpose to the story or explaining anything to the audience. It’s just a tool. One that I would very much like to have.
The best example I can think of in favor of what you are saying, where the computer does kind of serve the story and helps the audience, is the episode where Doctor Crusher gets stuck in the warp bubble and she has a lot of conversations with the computer about what is happening. But even then, she is out of her element, needs a lot of help from the computer, and it seems more convenient to do so via voice than anything else. She still travels to different areas of the ship to carry out actions, even though she probably doesn’t have to in case. The computer is clearly at its best for simple actions and answering questions, even if it can do more. The characters understand that and use the technology accordingly.