When humans can manufacture devices that can respond to their instructions in a span of a milliseconds, how difficult should it be to create a device that response to gestures in an intuitive manner? Well, our science fiction has always focused on the world where humans can interact with computers without any difficulty whatsoever.
Just watch any episode of Star Trek and you will find each and every individual interacting with computers using voices and gestures without any hassles. Americans, Russians, Japanese, black, white, Hispanics – the computer can understand each and every language and accent without any difficulty. What makes this difficult to make a real life is that there is not even a single human being who can claim to understand each and every language and accent in this world.
The minor differences in pronunciation of words can wreck havoc with the computers understanding. Translation often relies on context. Hence, translating a Russian proverb into English and then translating it back into Russian again renders it completely meaningless. These are practical issues that experts faced when they started aiming for intuitive technologies that would understand human beings better.
Let us take the example of voice recognition. It has been around for more than ten years now but we are yet to create a mass produced device that can understand human language accurately.
We are yet to manufacture a device that can understand each and every language in this world and convert voice into text. When compared to the larger scale of things, these aims and aspirations are rather modest. Yet, we are struggling to generate enough computing power to carry out these tasks.
Even if we succeed, we discover that the cost of making such a device is so high and prohibitive that it is virtually impossible to take it beyond the laboratory.
However, we do not have any reason to despair yet. We have done well considering that Industrial Revolution took place just three centuries ago. There are many more challenges ahead. Current knowledge of electronics and electricity may not be enough to take us ahead.