The Conversational Age
StumbleUponPhil Hall from Elzware loves bots. Here he discusses what he believes bots hold for the future in terms of communication, data capturing, and why the Internet should catch up with TV in terms of talking heads.
I have a
problem with digital media, and the problem is accessing
information easily.
Increasingly there is access to entertainment, but when things
go wrong there is little support for the common surfer. Strange how the current
state of the Internet ensures that the more common question you
have to ask the more choice - or do I mean confusion - you are
going to come across.
The idea at the front end of the Internet was about communication, and then we got buried in information and are still buried, neck deep. What we could do with now is an understanding of the web literally: we need a human like structure to understand the Internet.
No we arent
talking about annoying/friendly (delete as appropriate) little
things that leap up to help you, or cheer you up, or tell you
that is raining in Bolivia we are talking about Business
strength Bots and there arent many of these around yet.
Can you talk to
it? No not really,
the Voice Recognition software is nowhere near complex enough to
differentiate to the level of detail that a Business Bot
requires, so in the mean while you can talk monosyllabically to
your phone and type like a human to any decent Bot that you come
across.
You see,
keeping a Bot alive costs pence per second. Delivering conversations
are a couple of s and this is a graded scale, for higher
utilised interfaces the cost of a conversation can drop to
tuppence and analysis of every word and every conversation in
context is possible. Just a little more cost
and information effective than a call centre.
So are we saying that we are replacing call centres with ranks of operatives keeping knowledge bases up to date? Far from it, we are reducing the requirement for human intervention by a factor of five most probably, so that 20% of the people deal with the valuable discourse and the rest is dealt with by Bots.
But is you
really want to push the envelope a little here you should talk
about convergence and we have all heard lots on this topic over
the last few years.
You see there is a element that is missing from the Internet
that the TV has always had in abundance. Talking heads.
So take a step
forwards in time, even the voice recognition boys can follow on
with this, though you might need to wear a headset on your
sofa. I am watching
the TV, in the kitchen like the Italians tend to and I want to
take some information off of the Internet. I talk to it and it
understands web pages come alive and not with Flash so deep you
want to cry Saviour of the Universe.
You see email
is old hat, for the exchange of business information it is slow,
clumsy, wasteful and full of spam no, really. Why the far more
immediate instant communication exchange has not become a
standard is due to two things: ignorance of both the
current state of the art, and the capabilities of a well-managed
configuration. I
have tried live chat a few times too, and felt like I was
talking to a half decent Bot that was drifting off to
sleep.
We are past
content management now, and this is information management. We are looking at
grasping the thoughts and feelings of customers, consumers in
whatever part of whatever cycle. Why are shopping carts
being abandoned?
What arent you doing? What is sexy? What is fun? With a Bot you have the
chance of understanding. Take a moment and raise
the issue with your CIO or Marketing Director, you might just
move the Internet into the 21st Century.
So where are
the Luddites?
Waiting in the wings it seems. There was a book review that came
across my screen recently a pair of writers that were worrying
about the ability for people to deal with the social
implications of Bots knowing about them. To be frank that sounds
fine to me. The
ability for a conversational interface to the web, to help me
with the plethora of information that is out there, would be a
boon and a blessing.
Elzware is
working with the first serious Business Bots right now, we have
called ours Yhaken and we work with others as well. As with all
good things the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so talk
to the Bot directly on www.elzware.com/bot.php
and imagine what a development of this core knowledge base could
do for the Internet.
Right now the
market is opening up across sectors and languages with the likes
of Fiat, Cahoot and Ikea stepping forwards with sensible
configurations. You
see the media really is the message and messages are
communicated in the main by conversation. If you dont agree with
this dont blame me, I am only the messenger.
About the author: Phil Hall is the founder and Director of Elzware. Elzware is a specialist consultancy for the design, development and support of Bot interfaces. Elzware is has been built from 4 years of experiences in the A.I. marketplace. Our key developments is the Elzware Template, this is a core knowledge base of answers to the many questions asked of Bot interfaces. It has structures to facilitate easier developments of knowledge for specific applications. Note that the only way you will understand what Phil is talking about it to take him out to lunch, a long lunch. This is not only a hang over from the time he spent working for a large systems integration company but also a really nice thing to do. www.elzware.com
Comments
nathan_barley said:
Yhaken <p>Not bad, but also a bit irritating. If it doesn't stop bouncing, someone should kick its bot.<br/></p>
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