Instant answers to clear enough questions seems quite feasible, and it seems the tech of voice interaction, augmented reality, various kinds of ubiquity of Internet access, IoT, and others are converging to some solution where we can ask anytime about some object or data and get the answer in the place we need it, out of thin air. More magic is coming, by the standards of Arthur C. Clarke!

The impact of this magic on the ways of life on various continents, that is where the future is not simple at all, but then it is not about tech anymore.

My hope is that the coming tech magic will be modular and affordable enough that most of us can start participating to making tech something truly appropriate to our needs. There are huge innovation and business opportunities in services that offer artificially intelligent and conversant parts and services that most people can assemble and use at the time and place of need. Alexa puts hands free knowledge anyplace, as well as a way to interact with any surrounding connected things.

With that in mind “instant answers” does not seem so interesting. Actually the idea of search seems old. Why do I need to know stuff, when in fact I want to do things and get satisfactions, and ideally bypass the intermediary of me knowing what to do and having to be the intermediary between things that should talk to each other and do what I need, sparing me the details.

Of course the devil is in the details, which is ok with me personally. (I’ve started programming and tinkering when I was 14 in the late 80's and followed tech enough that I don’t see much magic behind most gadgets.) But I definitely hope that this coming technology that converses and knows stuff will be able to show, explain and possibly justify its answers, and, can also tell me the implications of some of my actions. For example if I obtain the 3D plan for irrigation devices on my land, the system would tell me about legal and water implications, besides whatever else I asked it.

I also feel the future is more interesting when we create it than when we try to predict it :)