Say What? How Autofill Technology Is Changing The Way We Communicate
Download mp3 (13.78 MB)LAUREN GILGER: OK, so Steve, you know how nowadays when you're writing an email, Gmail — or whatever where it is — will often kind of suggest to you how you finish a sentence?
STEVE GOLDSTEIN Yeah. Like, for example, I'll be typing, "Great too," and it'll fill in, "hear from you." Now, freaks me out a little bit because it knows exactly what I want to say. I think I need to be more creative or something.
GILGER Maybe, right? But this is the next wave sort of autocorrect. It's autofill — this kind of predictive technology that's not only fixing our spelling errors anymore, but it's also now, kind of, predicting the things we say and how we say it.
GOLDSTEIN OK, so here is the world question ... the big global question: What does all this mean?
GILGER Right. OK. And ... is it fundamentally changing the way we communicate with one another? So, I had the same question, and I continually allow my Gmail to finish my thoughts for me. So, I sat down to talk more about it with Ed Finn. He is the founding director of the Center for Science in the Imagination at Arizona State University.
