The future is an API mashup. Neat. It does make me wince a bit thinking that the actual techniques driving all of this are locked up tight, and subject to going away whenever the owning business decides to do so. Hopefully the actual future is a little more open.
There is a view of the future where we query Google (or Siri) by voice and it just gives us exactly what we want.
I think a better "vision" is an open voice input engine that then connects, or even bridges, other systems via APIs.
I particularly like the idea of a service such as Zapier bridging a infinite universe of APIs to connect things together -- "computer request Uber black car when I receive a Skype call from Jim."
An input engine could create a marketplace of APIs. Commercial services, such as Uber, could profitably offer their APIs for free. Other services without a specific product may run their APIs on a cost per use basis. A mass market cost-per-use API could charge a few pennies per inquiry but still be very profitable.
Perhaps what I am describing could represent the demise of the search engine as we know it.
Agreed, it'd be cool to develop some kind of verbal querying for the semantic web rather than relying on a proprietary knowledge base - but that's a whole other project for another day.
Comments
The future is an API mashup. Neat. It does make me wince a bit thinking that the actual techniques driving all of this are locked up tight, and subject to going away whenever the owning business decides to do so. Hopefully the actual future is a little more open.
There is a view of the future where we query Google (or Siri) by voice and it just gives us exactly what we want.
I think a better "vision" is an open voice input engine that then connects, or even bridges, other systems via APIs.
I particularly like the idea of a service such as Zapier bridging a infinite universe of APIs to connect things together -- "computer request Uber black car when I receive a Skype call from Jim."
An input engine could create a marketplace of APIs. Commercial services, such as Uber, could profitably offer their APIs for free. Other services without a specific product may run their APIs on a cost per use basis. A mass market cost-per-use API could charge a few pennies per inquiry but still be very profitable.
Perhaps what I am describing could represent the demise of the search engine as we know it.
Agreed, it'd be cool to develop some kind of verbal querying for the semantic web rather than relying on a proprietary knowledge base - but that's a whole other project for another day.