Undo Part 48

"This is much better," Matthew said, stepping up to the low platform. He and Laurence kicked off their shoes and handed them to the hostess, who placed them outside the private room. They seated themselves side by side in the sunken pit, facing the sliding door.

The door slid closed and they opened their menus. A moment later Matthew felt Laurence's stocking feet resting on top of his own.

He scanned the menu briefly then folded it. "How about I order?"

he said, noticing she was having some difficulty choosing among the unusual dishes. "Trust me," he said, and kissed her forehead.

He felt like a man on top of the world. This was how things should be. In the past couple of months his wife had calmed down, just as he had known she would, and was off again doing her projects and things. Whatever it was she was occupying her time with he did not care, so long as she remained placated. As for her affair, he supposed she was still carrying on with it, but with whom, and where, he could not say. Nor did he care.

The rice paper screen silently slid open, and the waitress entered carrying a tray. She handed them each a moist hot towel and filled their mugs with green tea, and Matthew recited their order.

The waitress exited, and he gave Laurence's knee a little squeeze. "Don't worry, I picked a nice variety. No appalling surprises, I promise."

"Amazing!" William Harrell said excitedly as the ISLE system looked up a name he asked it to find in its sample phone directory. "And what did you say ISLE stands for?"

"Intelligent Speech and Language Environment."

"Right," William said. "Tell me more about the recognition interface."

"It was what really shifted our focus on this whole new design,"

Peter began. Byron, Paul, and Rick sat at the table also, listening as Peter explained their design. "We had already decided that intelligent agents were the next big step in portable computers and devices, but it didn't seem like enough to us. We wanted more. And when we encountered the ISLE hardware and software, the pieces just sort of fell in place."

He paused for a moment, picked up the small black box sitting on the table before them. "In its final configuration, this circuitry will fit on one single PC card, that slides into one of the portable's available slots. It contains the core recognition software, speech synthesizer, and 74,000 word English language library. The card's extra RAM stores up to 5,000 additional words, such as last names or companies or terms you commonly refer to.

Additional libraries, ones that are industry-specific, for example, medical libraries, can be stored on another PC card, or on the hard disk."

"Incredible," William said. "But really, do people want this sort of interface? Will they really use it? In tests we conducted in our labs, we found that while users often asked for speech recognition, few actually used it once we installed it on prototype systems. What makes this any different?"

Peter nodded in agreement. "You're right. It's true. While people think they want to be able to talk to a computer, have it take dictation, we believe what they really want is to give it simple commands to make certain small tasks simpler. But listen, instead of telling you all of this, why don't we show you instead. Guys?"

Paul and Rick arranged the hackneyed Joey Plus computer in front of William and Peter handed him a microphone.

"In a final product," Peter said, "we'll of course build-in a microphone for hand's free operation." He hit a few keys. "Now, say you are driving in your car and you remember that you need to send an e-mail or fax to an a.s.sociate to confirm an upcoming appointment."

"Okay," William said. "How do I start."

"Do what comes naturally."

William thought about this for a second then spoke into the microphone. "Pip, create an e-mail."

The Joey's hard disk was busy for an instant and then a blank e-mail form popped up on the screen. The Joey said, "To whom?"

William turned to Byron with wide eyes. Byron nodded and whispered, "Go on, give the little fella what he's asking for."

William said: "Peter."

Joey: "Peter Jones? Or Peter Smith?"

"Peter Jones," William said, then he covered the microphone and was about to say something, but Peter antic.i.p.ated his question before he could ask it.

"That's the agent at work, behind the scenes. It found two Peters in the address book and didn't know which one you wanted, so it asked you to decide."

The Joey filled in the 'To:' field and skipped to the next line.

It had already filled in the 'From:' and 'Date:' fields automatically.

"Subject?" the Joey said.

"Meeting confirmation."

The Joey considered this for a few seconds and then the monthly calendar view appeared on the screen, layered above the e-mail form.

"Do you mean your meeting scheduled for this Friday?"

"Yes."

The Joey automatically keyed in the subject field with: "Meeting Confirmation, July sixth."

"Dear Peter," the Joey said, then "Please begin your message, William."

William recited a brief note, saying that he was looking forward to the upcoming meeting. When he was done, he covered the microphone with his hand again and turned to Byron. "How do I tell it I'm done?"

"Just say it's name first, and it will know that you want to give it a command. That's why we named this one Pip. It's a word it would probably never encounter in your normal correspondence and so it knows that you are talking to it, rather than giving it text to put on the screen."

"Pip," William said into the mic, "That's all."

The Joey did not respond.

"Pip," William tried again, "Thank you."

Nothing.

William looked at Peter, who looked at Rick.

"What's the word for done," Peter said.

"Done," Rick said. "Looks like we'd better put in a few more ways of saying done," he said, scribbling a note to himself.

William said, "Pip: done."

"Thank you," the Joey said. "Shall I send this fax now or later?"

"Now," William said. He looked at Peter. "Is that okay."

Peter nodded.

"Sending," the Joey said. A few moments later the portable's built-in modem dialed the phone line plugged into it. They heard the line ring through the computer's speaker, and a half-second later the fax machine in the workroom rang. It picked up on the next ring, and William got up and went over to it. The fax he had just dictated, properly dated and addressed, whispered out of the fax machine and lay in the tray, complete. William picked it up and let out a pleased whistle. He heard two beeps behind him and he turned around.