It’s often fun to look back at old science fiction. Sci-fi from decades past often shines a light on what we really hope for from technology. And in looking backward we can often find inspiration for our journeys forward.

Computers themselves are a good example of this trend. We can best understand this by looking as far back as we can. The start of science fiction in the multimedia world is often thought to be the 1927 film Metropolis. The film is nearly 100 years old at this point. As such, one can certainly argue for its age. But what’s really remarkable is how it comments on modern technology.

The movie puts a heavy focus on the very concept of work and physical labor. It also touches on the idea of computers that we can fully converse with. This idea was ubiquitous in sci-fi for a very long time. But it seemed to disappear for a while in the modern consciousness. One big reason is that we simply became used to typing. It’s almost strange to consider. But typing was once a fairly eclectic skill. It was something that writers and secretaries had real skill with. But other than that, it was rather unknown in the world at large.

Today we can all type quite quickly. But we still have that urge to actually speak to our computers. We love the idea of it and often become confused as to why it’s so rare. Some of the larger tech companies have finally started to bring the technology to the world. But it’s fairly limited when one considers platform lockin. It’s great for buying things from those specific companies. But it doesn’t do much for people who want to create their own speech aware platforms.

And there’s good reason why it’s still somewhat limited. Speech recognition is just one part of the process. And even that small part takes tremendous computational power and skill. Cloud computing has played a part in taking some of these difficulties away. But even then, there’s still some significant issues to watch out for. Basically, one faces some difficult and often uncharted domains when trying to create a computer that can actually converse with people.

The real answer is that one needs to leverage all existing resources. This includes making use of 3rd party software libraries, consulting companies and general expertise in all Conversational AI Software Solutions. The results can prove rather shocking.

For example, chatbots often simulate proper conversation. But they usually lack speech recognition. Meanwhile speech recognition tends to require stronger hardware than hobbyists have on hand. And tying together two seemingly disparate technologies like this might appear beyond their reach.

But it often simply takes a hand that’s had experience in this area. Again, this is why third-party libraries and consulting companies are often so useful. They can connect one’s needs with the available resources. And the end results might finally bring the dreams of the past into the reality of our shared future.