A time will indeed come when we will be living in the age of Ultron. From mobile phone to game consoles to operating systems, we live in an age of convenience where simply uttering commands to a personal digital assistant will perform the desired task more efficiently than doing it manually but is the this a fad or will it be entrenched in our daily lives where a person talking to his phone will become the new normal. The mobile space is constantly pushing the narrative with regards to personal digital assistants with the major ones being Siri from Apple, Cortana from Microsoft and Google Now.
Pros
Personal digital assistants are indeed helpful, I use Cortana both on desktop and mobile and she does indeed provide relevant information related to my interest which include summary of results of premier league, technology news and traffic information in case it’s time to leave for office or time to head home. The digital assistants excel when fully integrated with your platform of choice to provide you with relevant and much more customised information.
Cons
As much as personal digital assistants may seem like gimmicks to sell more devices they can at times cause major annoyances in daily use. At times while using these assistants they may not understand your query and may show you something entirely different.
Let’s take the case of Microsoft’s CEO who was giving a keynote speech at Dreamforce conference and Cortana totally fails to get what he is telling her until backroom staff helped out (http://www.businessinsider.in/Microsoft-CEO-Satya-Nadella-just-had-an-epic-Cortana-fail-in-front-of-a-huge-crowd/articleshow/48994374.cms)
Another negative of using the personal assistants is the hit the battery takes as a lot of them require location services to provide a truly comprehensive experience.
We may not be far from the age where natural language is our primary method of interacting with devices but for now the limited way we interact with personal digital assistants is already impressive and useful enough. Here’s to hoping it’s not a fad but the future.
