13 FEB

Here’s what Siri would have been like on MS-DOS in 1987

Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, Siri, and Bixby, we guess, are getting more and more prevalent, the narrative goes. A lot of people believe the personal assistant’s moment is now. But why now? Could it have happened back in say, 1987?

Probably not. But if you want a speculative glimpse at what that would have been like, you can watch this video from the YouTube channel Squirrel Monkey‘s popular Wonders of the World Wide Web series. As with previous entries about current products like Instagram and Tinder, it plays out like a VHS instructional video explaining to computer newbies how to get Siri working on their home computers.

It’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come; even if, hypothetically, someone had been able to get the intelligence and voice recognition right on a personal assistant in that time, all the other hardware and software limitations would surely have gotten in the way. Like abiogenesis in the primordial soup, sometimes the conditions all have to align for a technology to become usable by the general public.

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Post Author: martin

Martin is an enthusiastic programmer, a webdeveloper and a young entrepreneur. He is intereted into computers for a long time. In the age of 10 he has programmed his first website and since then he has been working on web technologies until now. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of BriefNews.eu and PCHealthBoost.info Online Magazines. His colleagues appreciate him as a passionate workhorse, a fan of new technologies, an eternal optimist and a dreamer, but especially the soul of the team for whom he can do anything in the world.