The Internet revolution has made our lives easy by
connecting everyone together. The Mobile (smart
phone) revolution went further and connected the
third countries to the Internet. Today there are 2.6
billion smartphones globally and these are expected
to grow to 6.1 billion by 2020. Without needing a
computer/laptop and with just a smart phone you
can get connected to the world.
Over the a period of time, the connected world
needs to be better, smarter and contextually aware.
When we search for ‘Hotels’ after searching for
‘Phoenix’, then the search engine should interpret
‘Hotels’ as ‘Hotels in Phoenix’ without you typing
‘Hotels in Phoenix’. If the search engine can connect
the subsequent search with previous search, it can
provide better results without you explicitly asking.
If you take one step further, search engines can take
the location from your browser or the mobile phone
and apply it to your query. When you search for ‘Ho-
tels’, search engines can take the location from your
mobile phone and change your query ‘Hotels’ to ‘Ho-
tels in Phoenix’. Applying context helps consumers
and those who are applying context to the connected
world are shining in the competitive market. By ap-
plying who, what, when, where and how, the applica-
tions can provide the best results.
Contextual World
PCAs
PCAs in future
Collecting the data is not a problem, in fact, 90% of
the data in the world today has been created in the
last 2 years alone. Analyzing the data is also not a
problem. The more you share, the more the system
can collect and analyze/predict the future. The PCAs
can even save lives. Let’s say you are driving at 65
miles per hour on interstate freeway I-10 and the
traffic is moving at 65 miles per hour. All of sudden
your speed became 0 and it’s not going up. If your
PCA knows this info and the traffic is moving at 65
miles per hour in that area, then the chances are you
met with an accident. Sometimes, it could be serious
and you are not in a position to call 911, but your PCA
can. By applying the context, your phone can auto-
matically dial 911 and share your location for imme-
diate medical response.
We are no more living in just a connected world,
we are living in a contextual world and personaliza-
tion is moving away from the static preferences (set
by you) to dynamic preferences (learned from you).
We are living in the ‘Era of Tera’ meaning we are liv-
ing in the era of data where data can be in terabytes
or petabytes or Exabytes. More data can lead to more
and more discoveries and it can even help shape the
future. Whether you are going to use the data now or
in the future, you should collect the data for future.
Some even say ‘data is the new oil’, because the data
is going to drive more and more meaningful insights.
I will cover more examples around this topic in the
future. Until then, happy reading!!!
Personal assistants can assist you if they know you
better. If they know what their boss likes and what
boss doesn’t like, then they can assist better/faster.
If their boss likes Indian food, then they know where
to schedule his/her next lunch meeting. There are
two ways how they learn about what their boss likes.
One - by asking their boss, two - by learning over the
time. The same applies to personal digital assistants
as well. Digital assistants can learn your likes in two
ways as well. One - from your preferences, two - by
learning over the time. The ‘over the time’ part is
where digital personal assistants are going to shine.
Of course, it depends on the amount of data that
you share about you. The more you share, the faster
those can learn your likes/dislikes. The data process-
ing/analysis became easy these days, thanks to the
technologies like Hadoop and Big Data, by applying
context, these digital assistants can become more
powerful than the human personal assistants. For
example, if you schedule a lunch meeting at a restau-
rant which is 30 minutes away from your work place/
current location and if traffic happens to be unusual
at that time, let’s say it takes 1 hour, then your digi-
tal personal assistants can warn you to leave for that
lunch meeting 1 hour before instead of 30 minutes.
The digital personal assistants can use the traffic con-
text to assist you better.
Modern digital personal assistants are called Per-
sonal Contextual Assistants or PCAs. Google’s Google
Now is the champion, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s
Cortana are the challengers in this space. Almost all
of the time, Google Now can predict your next move
and assist you with the required information. It ana-
lyzes your driving patterns, what time you go to work,
what time you leave fromwork, where you parked ve-
hicle etc. It shows local time and local weather based
on your location and also shows home town’s local
time and weather if you happen to be away from your
home town. It shows, news and stocks based on your
preferences and search patterns etc.
Of course, this raises the question of privacy. In order
to predict your next move, it should know lots about
you. If you worry that Google knows a lot about you,
then PCAs are not for you. If your personal assistant
doesn’t know much about you, then they can’t sched-
ule your lunchmeeting without asking the questions
like when, where etc. If you share your preferences
such as Indian food, lunch between 11 and 12:30,
then your personal assistant can assist you without
asking many questions. Same applies with PCAs as
well. The more you share, the better PCAs can assist
you.
PAGE- 5 July 2016
WWW
.azindiatimes.com
Without context, a piece of in-
formation is just a dot. It floats in
your brain with a lot of other dots
and doesn’t mean a damn thing.
Knowledge is information in con-
text… Connecting the dots”
- Michael Ventura.
Hari Gottipati is a tech evangelist based out of
the valley. Opinions expressed here are solely
his own and do not express the views or opinions
of his employer.
His quotes can be often found in
various technology magazines, Gigaom, WSJCnn
Money, Bloomberg, Businesweek Etc.
Follow him on
Twiiter/Facebook/Linkedin @harigottipati.
HARIGOTTIPATI
By.
HARI GOTTIPATI
