Robert Scoble & Shel Israel’s new book, “Age of Context“, is out. It is important and extremely relevant to this blog because it explains, better than we could, the significance of the very technology we are working on. If fact, the task of “understanding you” really means “understanding your context”. To best illustrate the notion of context, we will quote shamelessly from the book:
“We think of context as a particularly human trait, but it exists in all living things… Computers are not living things… But, over time we’ve added more humanlike capabilities such as memory or logic. This made them extremely useful at many things. They have become indispensable tools for calculating and correlating; designing buildings or rockets. They have become great at making bad photos look good; they can store, search, communicate and do lots of other useful stuff. But until very recently, not one computer had the good sense to wake you up early because it snowed last night and you’ll need a little extra time to get to work, or to anticipate when you’ll want another beer at a football game, or that you should see a doctor because your heart beats irregularly during exercise or that jet engines in flight need tweaking to be more efficient. Yet all that is happening today.”
Indeed. It’s happening here and now. Robin is already making significant progress in keeping track of your conversational, geographical and social context, and this is just the beginning! The next generation of Robin will further understand your personal lexicon, where you are going and what at you need help with most at any given moment. We live in exciting times – stay with us!