SNET and Volt have embarked in a heavy promotional effort, SNET in the interest of finding new carrier clients, and Volt in the interest of supporting SNET and finding new carrier clients of its own. There was a time in the not too distant past when the Internet was a novelty and the question was whether the Internet was going to have a significant impact. The question now is not whether it will have an impact, but where won't it have an impact. I hope that the computer devices in the real 2001 are more benevolent than was HAL, the computer in the movie. The level of spoken human-machine interaction may very well approach that depicted in the movie.
Speech recognition is one of the biggest impediments to communication between humans and machines.
Once continuous speech recognition is viable, live agents will be freed from delivery of rote information. Human information agents will become increasingly engaged in the creation of information, often for the purpose of feeding automated retrieval systems. Microsoft's Knowledge Base, which offers a natural language method of interacting with a sophisticated human-generated information database, provides a fascinating example of a system available today. In order to provide increased value to our subscribers, we are preparing to launch an electronic information delivery trial. In the near term, we plan to trial the use of daily e-mail delivery.