The most memorable scene in the 1986 movie, Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home involved a time-traveling Scotty trying to use a computer from the 1980s. He walks up to a Macintosh Plus and says: “Computer!” When the computer doesn’t respond, it occurs to Dr. McCoy that, because this is a primitive computer from the past, perhaps it needs a close-up microphone. So he hands the mouse to Scotty, who tries his voice command into the mouse.

The scene is as prescient as it is funny.

What Star Trek always got right was that the user interface of the future was conversational.

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