Over the last couple years, I've watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation while I've been running in the winter. As I've gone through the series, I've been struck by how the "computer" interacts with people, and the inconsistencies with it understanding the characters' actions and voice. I know it's staged for TV, but it does make me wonder if we will ever get anything like that in our world. Will computers actually be able to get enough context from humans to make interaction as easy as it seems on the show?

I watched a video of Project Natal recently, and you ought to watch the video. I'm sure some of it is staged, but the way they show it working reminded me of Star Trek and the computer-human interface. I am skeptical that it will work anywhere near as well as the trailer shows, even with a number of videos from people testing the device on YouTube. I think there will be issues when you have multiple people in the room walking around, lots of arm movement from different people, etc.

I think that there has to be a lot of BI-type work being done on the data in the background. Reading in data, looking for patterns, recognizing actions and more. It's quite a lot of processing that needs to occur for this to work, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn there's some of the same technology that's in SSAS or SSIS being used here to make the device work.

It makes me wonder if we will get more interactive technology in other areas, like BI systems that might allow analysts to more easily, or quickly, work with large sets of data. I know there's a lot of room for growth in this area, especilly if we can incporate context clues into the interface.

Steve Jones

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