We are changing jobs every year whether we want to or not, we are in technology. The need for online Marketing won’t change, the way it is done might.

2. What will this do the way human beings talk?

One of the things that I learned with Google speech is that you have to talk like you search. It appears that with Siri (and my limited experience reinforces this) is that it searches like you talk. That is a huge difference

3) who comes out as a winner, in terms of companies that stay in business?

By their nature, disruptive solutions create all new winners and losers. I would hesitate to predict that as the future is unknowable. I do see a world though where search as we know it, is no longer at the center of our experience. Google must recognize this as they have bought their own phone company.

The desktop isn’t going away. But this type of technology could bring all new players to the fore in a new way …..or it could give old companies a new break (think Bing, Mango & speech)… it could just ramp up Google’s efforts on this front and they keep their lead… I just don’t know who or when.

Regardless, its a good excuse to go out and buy a new phone.

1. Are we all about to be out of a job if this becomes the way people get their information?

2. What will this do the way human beings talk? If you recall, I bought the ill-fated Nexus 1 and use its voice technology frequently for search. Now, it does not offer the complex range of actions hinted at in this video, but I can use my voice to search instead of my fingers and it does a pretty good job of understanding me. That being said, I talk strangely into the device. Sort of the same way I talk when a phone answering service has you speak your answers into the phone instead of using the number pad. My voice is louder than normal, more monotone and kind of robotic sounding in these cases. I don’t know if it’s actually necessary to talk like this, but for some reason, I unconsciously make myself sound like a ‘robot’ in order to have each word be clear. Will we all end up sounding like that eventually, in our daily speech?

3. If one wants to keep being ‘important’ in the world of search, but Siri-type technology can pick just a few sources for its information, who comes out as a winner, in terms of companies that stay in business?

It’s all way too big for me to comprehend yet, but I’d love to hear your further thoughts and want to thank you for this piece.

Miriam

Great question!

Although it is not much different than what we are doing now… For the forseable future it is just an alternative to searching and the short, repetitive tasks in our lives.

Like any technology it is intrinsically neutral and the outcome can be a net gain or a net loss depending on its uses. I personally would put search as a net gain in that it gave me access to a wide variety of sources that I could not have accessed before. But in the end I still need to read, discuss, think and analyze to learn something and understand it.

Certainly in the current context, where many are perhaps less educated and more self absorbed, it might serve as just one more distraction masking reality.