Source Magnification Effect - the paradigm
that an individual is more convinced by an opinion or a statement when it is
expressed by a variety of people than by one person; is the dominant principle
at work in our digitally connected always on world. The last two months have provided me with
ample opportunities to experience it first hand. Let me explain:
After playing with
Amazon Echo the last week of November, I realized the opportunities in Voice
User Interface. As any disruptive idea, I approached the subject tentatively
with my co-workers, colleagues and confidantes. By the 20th or so conversation,
the tentative nature of the argument was replaced by energy- unlike anything I
had experienced in recent years. By the first week of January, the enthusiasm,
the twinkle and passion was uncontained. I dare you, bring up "Voice"
and you will be drenched in enthusiasm and energy.
That is a tall order
for a gentle, calm and collected individual with few words. Learnings leading
to notes; notes to blogs; blogs to articles; articles to books and published
book being purchased with absolutely no promotion. That is hitting a jackpot. The story does not end there just yet. In the
last week alone, I have seen article after article validating my the initial
impressions. There is not just validation but information, clarity and details that seemingly incorrect articles and whitepapers published on slideshare being rectified along the way. Wisdom and knowledge definitely have their own way in finding th motivated.
Weather it is an
Amazon employee showing off the Echo to a tech audience for the first time,
with all the errors and shortcomings; or it is a Google VUI guru explaining my
thoughts - Verbatim. The momentum of my, nay our line of thinking is just
beginning to gather substance and take much defined shape. We might disagree on the approach and paths, but we
all agree that the technology today works well enough to be put to good use.
There is value in
exploiting voice as an input-output mechanism; even in its imperfect form.
Imperfect form might be the best reason to get it to work for us. I was pleasantly surprised to see the
imperfections and approaches articulated somewhat along the lines of my
thoughts- though not completely the same
- We thought we knew how we converse- we don’t
- We thought we could teach machines the science of conversation- we cant do it just yet
- We thought conversations need perfect information- we are not sure about that.
If you are looking
to change the world, this is your opportunity. I strongly believe that when we
take on this challenge of teaching machines how to work with us; we may learn a
thing or two about ourselves. Source Magnification Effect is just the
beginning.
I am just beginning
to experience the Informational Social Influence effect. The effect where several people share my belief even though we did not collaborate, corroborate,
connect with each other or rip off each other. We all followed independent
investigations for different purposes, generating information and processing
them for our own purposes; yet we reach the same conclusion. The conclusion is
definitely the same. Voice is going to change the world.
Voice brings the next opportunity. Voice is a large undertaking and will take over a decade to mature into a commodity. There is a lot of work needed to get there. Our mission is clear, we teach the machines the ways of the humans.
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