Apple Astonishes — Hershel Sets Siri Free
Another Possible Product Review, by TBD Insider.
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Remember when you had to put your phone on a charging pad or **gasp** plug it into a power source? Remember when you had just a few short hours before you had to worry about juicing?
We’re all used to long-range wireless power since Apple and others introduced it not long ago. But as great as long-range EM-delivered power has been, you’re still tethered to within a few feet of a plugged-in emitter. And what about all our other devices? I’m still taking off my AirPods every few hours to recharge.
Tethered. That’s a good word to describe how we’ve lived since the advent of the smartphone. Until now.
Today at WWDC, new Apple CEO, Savannah Worth unveiled Hershel. If Siri is a damsel in distress, Worth says Hershel is her knight in shining armor: “Siri has let down her hair, and Hershel is helping her out of her tower.”
Hershel isn’t something you interact with, like Siri. It’s a framework for making sure Siri is 100% pervasive, 100% private, and 100% precocious. (More on that last p-word in a minute.)
Pervasive: Hershel allows device makers to deliver EM wireless power from device to device. Worth pulled Kris Lichter, CEO of powered backpack maker GotBack, on stage. They paired several devices to the GotBack EM-power supply: The near-invisible AirPod earphones and discs, iPhone vNext, new MacPad, AirThere AR glasses, and a 360° motion capture camera. The big stage screen lit up with a live feed of all the devices’ power status. All were charging continuously.
“Why is this important?” Worth asked the audience. “Well, first, GotBack is the first mobile power supply that can deliver a full day of power to five devices without a plugged-in EM emitter anywhere. Second, it recharges itself wirelessly whenever it’s in the same room as a plugged-in emitter. So basically you never need to plug in anything — not your AirPods, your iPhone, or even the backpack…ever. That’s why we don’t put charging ports on them anymore. And one more thing: Thanks to the ITF [Internet Transaction Fabric], if you do need some power from the grid and aren’t near your own emitter, no problem. You can jack into any available source and agree to peer-to-peer micropayments in exchange for a charge.”
Now Siri can be on all the time. She can be present in the smallest devices, like an earphone or wireless mic, listening for cues to do something without draining the battery. No more tapping on your ear to wake Siri up.
But now you’re asking, “Wait, I was already creeped out with my home system always listening to my family. At least legally it’s my home and people expect to be careful about what they say when they come over. Now I have to worry about Siri listening to everything everywhere, even in public? That has to be a massive violation of privacy.” Read on.
Private: The Hershel framework makes privacy pervasive, too. On stage, Worth flicked her signature blue-and-pink hair away to expose an ear, inserted an AirPod and attached the beam-forming mic dots to her throat. Then she put on a pair of AirThere glasses. She gave another set to Mr. Lichter. She turned to him and began to speak. The stage screen showed a transcript of everything she was saying and a feed of her augmented reality display. But Lichter was a blurred out shape with only very general stat badges — “person, male” — floating around it in augmented reality. Then he spoke. The stage screen showed his Siri transcript and AR display. His transcript redacted her words, and Worth’s redacted his. But she appeared clearly in Lichter’s display with more stat badges — “Apple CEO, Twitter account”. Then Worth turned to the audience:
“What’s happening here is amazing,” she said, her words continuing to appear on her transcript. “Kris here has a smart contract on the ITF that tells Siri to redact what he says and whenever she sees him on camera. As you know, this is the law of the land now, and Siri is a law abiding citizen. But I’m a little less shy. I still don’t want my words recorded by anyone other than me, but I’m cool if I’m caught on camera…that’s just how I roll…it’s a Millenial thing.”
The other important privacy feature is that much of Siri’s processing and filtering is being done locally, thanks to the new Hershel synaptic chipset inside the iPhone vNext, the result of a collaboration with IBM Research’s neurosynaptic chip unit. So you don’t have to trust distant servers. Hershel processes everything you see and say locally on your own devices, works out any rights to the content (and any related micropayments, if owned by others), and stores it all in your self-soverign identity wallet — all secured by the ITF. Nobody, not even Apple, can access it without you explicitly sending it in an ITF transaction.
Precocious: pervasive privacy liberates Siri to do what she was meant to do years ago — be a true executive assistant that gets things right, gets things done, and gives you unexpected insights.
After ushering Mr. Lichter off stage, Worth came back to show off Siri’s new powers. She said, “Siri, what’s on your mind?” And Siri’s voice replied, “Savannah, I noticed you haven’t bought a new bag since last Fall. Your usual pattern is every six months, by the way. The man you were talking with, whose identity I can’t access, has a public smart contract on the ITF. It’s a special offer for the GotBack bag. I noticed you looking at it a few minutes ago. Do you like it?” Worth replied, “Yes, I do…what’s the offer?” And Siri went on to say that it was 1/2 off for the next five minutes. Images of the bag and the deal appeared in the AR display. “Buy it and send it to the house.” Worth said.
And that was it. The audience was on its feet. Standing ovation for Siri, Hershel and Savannah Worth.
This story is fiction, based on our fevered imagination of products and services that could be delivered to market based on current and emerging know-how — given sufficient resource and intent. Any resemblance to real products, either released or planned, is coincidental.
If you want to know what Apple is really announcing in the nearer future, go to https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ and tune in June 5–8.
If you like this story, please hit that heart icon, and subscribe to TBDInsider for a new story weekly.
