About eight years ago I went with a bunch of colleagues from Reed Elsevier to visit the Microsoft campus in Redmond and was treated to a presentation from Rick Rashid, the head of Microsoft Research. The most striking thing I heard him say was that they knew exactly what to build, it was just that it was very hard to achieve. That “thing” was the Star Trek Computer – a pervasive, all-knowing computer with a simple interface always there to help bemused humans. (He’s still trying…).

Recently there have been leaps forward in pervasive computing which bring that future tangibly closer. The Google App for the iPhone is one such; pick up the phone, speak into it and search results come back based on your location and what you searched for.

This post points to another giant leap forward. Bring on the Star Trek future.

Technorati Tags: computing, future, iPhone, Microsoft, research