The Future of Lies

We've been trying to orally communicate with our machines for a number of years. We haven't had a terrible amount of success until the last few years. The Google Nexus One will let you perform a number of complex actions with simple voice commands (the fact that the phone transmits the sound of your voice to Google where it is decoded and data sent back to the phone is irrelevant). Microsoft Sync is a similar system, optional in any Ford/Linclon/Mercury vehicle which also works exceedingly well. How long will it take for systems like these to be standard on devices, large and small?

Intel Chief Technology Officer, Justin Rattner, theorizes that as computers become faster, we'll begin programming them to think in the same way we do. This makes sense, seeing as our brains seem to be the most efficient computers in existence. When these computers begin to think like us, voice recognition and synthesis will be completely natural. At this point, the most convenient and efficient way to interface with a computer will be by speech. It becomes not entirely unlikely then, that text and writing will eventually fade and our culture will be orally based, like those that existed thousands of years ago.

The difference is that instead of bards passing down and retelling stories through the generations, we'll have computers recording everything we do with 100% accuracy and perfectly communicating the situation to anyone within reason (Ignore the issues with this right now). Since these computers have all the accuracy of written word, will be easier to interface with, and will be in the hands of everyone, society will still be able to advance in much the same way it does now only much faster.

A great deal of information can be conveyed through speech. Tone, pitch, inflection, loudness, and rhythm together convey the true intent of a message behind words. Our brains interrupt these cues and do their best to determine meaning. We then reply, automatically adding these elements into our speech.

The problem I see is this:

These same elements of speech can also be used to hide the intent of a message. What's to keep someone from creating a nice, sweet, mild mannered program with a pretty little voice to deceive and manipulate us in all kinds of creative ways? And the lies get a hell of a lot more convincing if we add holographic body language to the mix. Human psychology is a bitch like that.

Is it any wonder I used to write science fiction?