Elementary
AT&T demoed something remarkable that it calls Watson – and made it available as an API for developers today. To quote Engadget, since they were on-hand:
“One day AT&T hopes to make this a standard feature of its services, eliminating the language barrier once and for all.”
Learn more by reading “AT&T Translator app hands-on: smashing the language barrier” (video included).
I hope AT&T does both make this a standard feature and smash the language barrier, because this is the kind of sci fi wonderfulness that makes me excited for the future and glad to be in the field of instructional technology. Some might say that eliminating the need to learn a language may diminish the nuanced understanding of other cultures that language skills unlock. To the contrary, I think Watson pulls down the barriers that prevent many people for getting curious enough about other cultures to even want to learn the language. Were more people able to connect human to human with a mitigating tool to bridge the distance between tongues, it would bring the world just that much closer together. Watson, then, is a beautiful thing.