Our Adaptive Systems Interactions Group is looking at computers knowing much more about you, about your preferences and your task and your expertise level, so it can provide help in a more graceful manner. What you're talking about reminds me of what Microsoft attempted to do with the release of Microsoft Bob a few years ago. You see some of that approach in Office Assistant. Yeah, there's this same thread there in terms of social user interfaces, and Bob was an attempt in that space. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean it was a bad idea in general.
People treat computers like people.
Just make the systems much more sensitive to these human qualities and do something intelligent with it. I've seen product demos that use a person's retinal scans to operate a computer system. Some companies are developing technologies that make use of gestures and voice. I think it's mostly software. But there are different aspects of software.