Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report
Mary Meeker, a venture capitalist and the head of Bond Capital, presented her research on the upcoming trends in Internet technologies in 2016. Her yearly presentation has become quite an industry event and a trend in itself. As you watch, identify two or three key trends that interest you most.
Re-Imagining People and Computers: Voice
A new paradigm in human/computer interaction is how Meeker introduces her analyses of this segment, one that she discusses at length over 22 slides. She notes that there have been "innovations every decade over the past 75 years, from punch cards for informatics in the early 19th century right up to voice on mobile and on connected devices in the second decade of the 21st century.
The time is now for the next development, Meeker says, citing significant improvements in speech recognition technologies and capabilities, and natural language recognition and processing, that lends credence to the claim that voice should be the most efficient form of computing input.
I'd also add reference in the slide above to current real-world (and rapidly evolving) capabilities with conversational speech recognition that IBM Watson is capable of as described in this VentureBeat report last April. Look at this aspect of machine speech recognition in a year's time and see evolution in front of your eyes.
The computing interface is evolving from keyboards to microphones and keyboards (keypads on mobile devices), Meeker says, but adding "it's still early innings". She's clearly a baseball (or cricket) fan.
Note the growth of "Navigate home" over the past three years, with the obvious connection to being mobile (eg, primarily in a car).
I talk to my phone all the time; pretty soon, it will look like I'll no longer seem weird to most people.
Meeker then considers voice as the computing interface in the context of hands and vision-free that expands the concept of 'always on' when you're busy or unable to use your hands or give something your full visual attention.
