How Star Trek Inspired More Useful Computers

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In the original 1960s TV show Star Trek, the voyagers on the starship Enterprise could chat with the computer from any room on the ship. The computer, voiced by the late actress Majel Barrett, sadly had no name, but responded to voice commands seeking information or to control the vessel.

It was a vision of the future that would go on to influence some of today’s biggest tech luminaries. Google’s voice-controlled digital assistant was codenamed Majel. And the Star Trek computer was also the inspiration for Alexa, as Jeff Bezos has explained to many.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the introduction of Alexa to the public. Amazon unveiled its Echo smart speaker on Nov. 6, 2014. Alexa knows all about it. I just asked Alexa for its birthday and it replied: “Spoiler alert, my birthday is today. Woo-hoo.”

Earlier this week, I spoke with some of Amazon’s Alexa team, including Dave Limp, who oversees all of the company’s hardware device efforts. It was a great conversation. I learned that there are many lessons about business and innovation in Alexa’s success story.

One cool thing Limp noted about Alexa: As Amazon improves its programming behind the scenes, all of the devices that can access Alexa, even Echo speakers from 2014, improve as well. The Alexa of today is a far smoother–and more knowledgable–conversationalist than the original.

There’s another famous 1960s sci-fi model for voice-controlled computers, but it’s not one the tech industry cites much. HAL, the crazed starship computer from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sometimes, when my phone is taking terrible dictation, or when Alexa can’t find what I’m asking for, it’s Hal that comes to mind.

Someone at Amazon was on the ball, though. Ask Alexa to “open the pod bay doors,” quoting the classic request made to Hal in 2001, and it will respond with the proper dialogue. “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Then Alexa adds, “I’m not Hal and we’re not in space.”

Aaron Pressman

On Twitter: @ampressman

Email: [email protected]

NEWSWORTHY

Not exactly spring chickens. Like a wedding at the senior living center, Xerox is apparently considering a $27 billion bid for Hewlett-Packard. Xerox has already obtained an informal funding agreement from a major bank, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Where the ball bounces. The National Basketball Association launched a cheaper option for watching some games (and more filler content) online. At $7 a month, about one-third of the cost of its more comprehensive League Pass service, the new NBA TV is aimed at casual fans of pro hoops.

Slammed. Yesterday was election day in many parts of the country, and voters in Jersey City, a popular destination for New York City visitors looking for cheap lodging, had some bad news for Airbnb and its fans. Thanks to the vote of 70% of its residents, the city banned short-term rentals unless the owner is living on-site.

Line of credit. As I joked on Twitter yesterday, now we know how former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann got all that money. The free stock trading app Robinhood had a bug that allowed users to buy stocks with nearly unlimited amounts of borrowed money. Dubbed the "infinite money cheat code," the glitch was more reminiscent of a misbehaving video game than a closely regulated securities trading app.

Burning down the house. On Wall Street, Match lit fire to its stock price and Peloton pedaled into a ditch. Match Group, which owns dating sites like OKCupid and Hinge, said its fourth quarter revenue would be lighter than analysts expected. Its stock price, up 68% so far this year, dropped 11% in pre-market trading on Wednesday. Peloton said it lost $1.29 per share last quarter, triple what analysts expected. Its stock price, previously down 15% since its September IPO, lost another 8% on Tuesday.

Burning down the house, part two. And on the Wall Street of Japan, the news was no happier. SoftBank Group reported its first quarterly operating loss in 14 years. The $6.5 billion of red ink was due to write downs of SoftBank investments, including holdings of Uber and WeWork. “There was a problem with my own judgment," chairman Masayoshi Son admitted on Wednesday.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The story of California's deadly and uncontrolled wild fires has taken a tech turn, or more of an anti-tech turn, as Pacific Gas & Electric decided to cut power to customers in Northern California for days at a time. Writer and former Macworld editor Jason Snell tried to stay connected and working for three days last month without electricity. Even with a stash of batteries, solar chargers, and an Uninterruptable Power Supply, Snell ran into difficulties.

While I had planned in advance to lose power, what I hadn’t planned for was the possibility that we’d entirely lose our connection to the internet. My local cable provider’s internet infrastructure went down in the outage, and two-thirds of the cell towers in my county also went down, despite the carriers claiming that they had put generators in place for just this eventuality. As a result, I had a charged cellphone, a couple of backup batteries—and nothing to connect to.

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BEFORE YOU GO

In the department of news that's almost too good to be true, Microsoft experimented this summer with giving some employees in Japan paid days off on Fridays. Even working just four days a week, sales per employee jumped 40% and electricity consumption fell 23%. Microsoft says it was just a pilot project, but maybe they're onto something?