Google and Communism are the two biggest brakes on technological progress in the Czech Republic
Google is known as an engine of technological progress. But what happens when it forgets a country?
There have been three main steps in the evolution of modern technology. Firstly the internet, secondly mobile devices, thirdly voice interface communication.
Voice search, voice shopping and voice commands in general is already a reality and every day standard in more than 80 countries. Voice interface communication is the next technological-evolutionary step. The question for Czechs is, whether the Czech republic will catch up with or fall behind other countries currently utilizing the technology. In fact, the people will not make the decision. Google will.
What am I talking about?
At the moment Google Assistant does not support the Czech language as is the case with any language not in the top 30 world languages.
There is an enormous risk of falling behind every year until Google supports Czechs in its Assistant. This gap between how technology is used by people in the US (and the other 79 countries in the world) and how we use it in the Czech Republic is growing every year.
In the countries that Google supports, people can shop, make reservations and fully utilize the Google Assistant by voice.
In the US every third child has access to the Google Assistant.
Build better voice apps. Get more articles & interviews from voice technology experts at voicetechpodcast.com
Methodological procedures have already been developed in schools to use voice assistants for teaching.
And companies are preparing to adopt voice assistants in large numbers, through which people will buy and make reservations with their voice.
In the US, it will soon become standard for a voice assistant to make a booking at your favorite restaurant for you.
And I’m not just talking about early adopters who use these technologies. Virtual assistants such as Google Home, Alexa or Siri today are in use by millions of people in 80 countries around the world, and by around 2025 there will be as many digital assistants in the world as people on earth.
Simultaneous translation with a voice assistant, automated adding of a subtitles to a video that does not have subtitles, and controlling the entire home with voice guidance are just a few uses of this voice ecosystem.
And in the Czech Republic we are still waiting.
We stand in front of a big technological milestone. The last such hindrance to technological development was communism. Until now, in a democratic society, it has seemed that we alone would be able to influence whether we belong to the modern world or not. Instead, it looks like we will have to wait for Google developers to put the Czech language into their To Do List for voice assistant.
It is clear that Google is a company that earns money, and first goes to “low-hanging fruits”. That is, language versions that have the potential of rapid adoption. In addition, the Czech language is rather complicated. It is understandable that Google has taken this approach. But that does not help the Czech people who usually adopt new technologies very quickly and in many areas are world leaders (e.g. 3D printers, nanomaterials …)
It is a question of whether the national lobbying policy should be focused in this direction, in addition to other matters. In order not to remain cut off technologically from the rest of the world.
The time when we will use the voice instead of a keyboard and display is slowly becoming a reality in the US and 79 other countries. In the US, a generation of users is growing up which will control the vast majority of technology with voice on daily basis.
Unfortunately, how many years of technological gap we will have, is not in our hands. With the ever-increasing speed of technological progress (which is incomparable to the progress our country made in the 1990s), it is a question of whether we can ever close this gap and catch up with the rest of the world.
