Quite a number of the incorrect predictions are related to one development only: speech recognition. The speech recognition software we have nowadays is not yet sophisticated enough to encourage wider use. (And it won’t become sophisticated enough until it incorporates (near-)human-level context knowledge for disambiguation.) So, all the predictions of it being the main interaction channel with our computers is not borne out.
Another, connected set of predictions, deals with machine translation and is not borne out at this time for the same reasons.
The first set (about portable computers) can be seen as mainly correct, except for the objects which are listed as portable computers for daily use. Instead of earrings and other jewelry we have cell phones and PAs, mp3 players, other media players, GPS nav systems in cars. The trend here is towards incorporating all of it into one object, rather than distributing into several and connecting them with a LAN. Look at how the cell phones/PAs evolved in the last few years: web browsers, emails, media players, document editors, calculators, converters, GPS or other (Google Maps) navigation, etc. I would look to them becoming the “portable computers” of Kurzweil’s prediction.
The rest is not that far from the current state of technology.
Quite a number of the incorrect predictions are related to one development only: speech recognition. The speech recognition software we have nowadays is not yet sophisticated enough to encourage wider use. (And it won’t become sophisticated enough until it incorporates (near-)human-level context knowledge for disambiguation.) So, all the predictions of it being the main interaction channel with our computers is not borne out.
Another, connected set of predictions, deals with machine translation and is not borne out at this time for the same reasons.
The first set (about portable computers) can be seen as mainly correct, except for the objects which are listed as portable computers for daily use. Instead of earrings and other jewelry we have cell phones and PAs, mp3 players, other media players, GPS nav systems in cars. The trend here is towards incorporating all of it into one object, rather than distributing into several and connecting them with a LAN. Look at how the cell phones/PAs evolved in the last few years: web browsers, emails, media players, document editors, calculators, converters, GPS or other (Google Maps) navigation, etc. I would look to them becoming the “portable computers” of Kurzweil’s prediction.
The rest is not that far from the current state of technology.