"I probably shouldn't be showing you this, Tamara. So let's just keep this informal. No notes. But here, have a look at one of MITI's new toys. Can you guess what this is?" He passed over a small device that had been sitting on his desk, his hand lingering on hers a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
She stared down at what appeared to be some kind of calculator-watch, except there was no watch face, merely a small speaker and two buttons.
"That uses advanced versions of MITI's new 64-megabit memory chips. There's nothing like it anywhere in the world. Without ever having heard the speaker's voice before, no calibration, it can translate ordinary spoken English into Japanese." He pointed to one of the buttons. "Just press there
and talk. When you finish, push the other button for the translation."
She did, testing it with the opening paragraph of Pride and Prejudice, her favorite novel. A simulated voice emerged from the small speaker on the face of the device and gave it back . . . in flawless Japanese.
"Not bad." She set it carefully onto the desk. The thing was actually almost frightening.
"Using this, linked to our new high-definition video and satellite, you could punch a button in your living room and bring up people on a wall-size screen from anywhere in the world, then talk to them in your language and be understood in theirs. It's a quantum advance over current technology." He retrieved the device, dropping it into a desk drawer.
"I must admit I'm very impressed."
"Truthfully, so am I. Where's this program of MITI's taking us?" He looked up. "But let me show you something else, which I think is even more astonishing. Of course you're aware that speech comprehension is easy compared to the really tough nut, duplicating the human eye. Since a visual image can contain billions of pieces of information, it can be very time-consuming for a computer to analyze all those at once and figure out what it's looking at. I've heard people at IBM claim that for a computer to recognize something even as simple as an odd-shaped coffee cup would still require almost an hour of processing, that to match the human eye and brain could take a computer the size of a building. But watch."
He walked over to a black metal installation attached to the wall and held up three fingers before its small lens. Then he pushed a button and spoke into a built-in microphone.