Buddy's Blog

My first day attending “What is the Internet, and what will it become?” really opened my eyes to some new and intriguing ideas. The seminar opened with a discussion about the team-up of Cortana and Alexa, from Microsoft and Amazon, respectively. When I first heard this, I remember thinking that it would be a quite unusual pairing, as both Alexa and Cortana serve a similar purpose. However, after hearing what others had to say, and reflecting after class, I am now thinking that Microsoft and Amazon joined forces in this area to both improve the technology and potentially overtake the more popular AI systems, such as Apple’s Siri and Google Home. Just like most technologies, some devices handle certain things better than others… same goes for Cortana and Alexa. The integration of both technologies will allow the user to utilize the strengths of both devices, without having to do any extra work.

Over the course of the meeting, we also discussed the history and evolution of the internet. It was very interesting to learn of its initial purpose and how it was developed. It is crazy to think about how much time and effort it took to assemble a machine that produced 3 functions per second… now we have devices that can spit out billions per second. This really got me thinking… if all this progress can be made in a little over a half of a century, what is in store for the future? Devices that can read our minds and surf the web based on our thoughts? Only time will tell.

I left the first meeting a little overwhelmed by the complexity of some of the topics, but I can clearly see the importance of the Internet in our lives today. I am excited to learn more and to make my contribution next week… to be continued.