One of the greatest challenges in the
communications field has been crossing linguistic barriers — the Achilles’ heel
of communication.
A lack of clear communication limits
knowledge, understanding, learning; in short, it limits the world around us. It
doesn’t matter if you’re American, European, or Asian. Your language is part of
the human accumulated knowledge. English prevails in the Western world, but it
only takes a trip to Japan, Malaysia, India or Russia to be literally lost for
words. Maybe not in major capital cities such as the cosmopolitan Tokyo—used to
the constant flow of western tourists—but just try to order lunch in a
countryside city. Considering that Asia holds a staggering 60% of the world’s
population, that would mean that 85% of the planet would not understand you,
even with your English 101. And I’m not talking about cultural differences, I’m
talking about a simple greeting or “Good morning, can you tell me the way
to...?”
Theorists claim that there’s a trend
towards language-unifying developing over the next few centuries, but that’s a
very slow process. That’s when we rely on technology. I believe that the next
step in the Communication Era (not information era) will be to overcome language
barriers. It will be to allow easy and quick communication all around the
globe. Not as Americans, Indians, Brazilians or Saudis, but as people, regular
people, who make friends, work, share knowledge, improve business and develop
culture.
Imagine adding a Facebook friend who
lives on the other side of the planet, who is a Buddhist, who works with
something you’ve never heard of before, or who has wonderful life stories to
share. Or better, imagine that you can improve your small business and make it
global, adding partners from the five continents, and not even paying attention
to the language that’s being used.
I imagine that in a near keynote
speech, Tim Cook will introduce an iPhone with an improved Sin who will not
only be able to understand your mother language, but also automatically
translate your messages to another iPhone with a different language. “And this
is just the beginning,” Cook will say. The iPhone is five years old, and I
can’t help but wonder what the next five years will bring to our hands.
Well, Sin has already taken the first
— and most difficult, by the way — step, which is to understand the context of
what we say. She knows the difference of meanings, contexts and expressions;
it’s pure magic, worth each cent invested by Apple in April 2010. Software so
pleasant and easy-to-use that Sin has already gotten a few proposals...
The iPhone 45 established the
beginning of a new voice interface that has opened a whole universe of
possibilities. You can be sure that its relentless evolutionary path will bring
great novelties and incredible surprises, It’s up to us to make the best use of
them.
