There's a reason talking cars never caught on

Arroxane Ullman sent this link to the Techwr-L mailing list:

A new company called Cognitive Code has built software that it believes will let everyday gadgets talk with humans. At the Techcrunch40 conference in San Francisco on Monday, the startup unveiled a developer's studio with a set of algorithms that convert strings of words into concepts and formulate a wordy response. The developer's studio could let businesses, such as cell-phone manufacturers and toy makers, use the technology to add conversational abilities to a product.

Instead of composing an e-mail on a PDA, says Leslie Spring, the company's chief technology officer, imagine instructing a handheld to "send an e-mail to Tom and tell him 'I'll be there in 10 minutes.'" Spring says that such a feature could be possible with the algorithms--based on 15 patents--that Cognitive Code has developed.

Geoff Hart, the list's resident pessimistic realistic futurist almost immediately posted this response:

A scene from 10 years in our future:

Device: "Dave, I'm sorry, but I seem to have experienced an
unrecoverable application error. Abort, retry, fail?"

Dave: "Huh? WTF? Speak English!"

Device: "Reinitiating speech mode. Dave, I'm sorry, but I seem to have
experienced an unrecoverable application error. Abort, retry, fail?"

Dave: "Could you possibly elaborate?"

Device: "Unrecognized user input: Elaborate: No such command.  
Initiating debugger mode."

Dave: "Hello? Hello?"

Device: "Debugger mode shows error lies between keyboard and chair.
Initiating ejection mechanism."

Dave: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Device: "Anyone for a nice game of minesweeper?" [Distant THUD! in
the background] "Unrecognized user input: Thud: No such command.
Initiating debugger mode..."

Which, of course, reminded me of that brilliant Dave Allen bit on talking cars: