Musician and entrepreneur Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas fame revealed in a Feb. 19 interview that he wants to develop screenless devices that can hold their own in a conversation.
No, it's not like Apple's Siri who can answer a user's questions, follow commands and display a sassy attitude because the musician does not want that. What he wants to develop is a device that a user can actually have a conversation with.
"I want to be able to talk to something that is actually an embodiment of the Internet in this persona. Where she has access to the Internet as her DNA. Where I could speak to her," the technopreneur says.
So much for trying to get people to have actual conversations with each other.
But why on Earth is Will.i.am thinking about such a thing anyway? It is actually possible that he just wants help with research and finding the most relevant results or, perhaps, something like a personal automatic Internet editor.
"The Internet is so huge, it's like the ocean and it's going to take so long to sniff through it to find things that are relevant," he says.
That dream, however, is a little far off into the distance because Will.i.am's focus right now is on "Dial," a wearable technology that he developed with the intention to compete with the Apple Watch and Samsung's Gear series.
The Dial's main difference with the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear S2 is that Will.i.am's device is not tethered to a phone and, instead, is the actual device that can be used as a smartphone. It can be used to call, text, email, track fitness and stream music, among others. The best part is that it's voice-activated.
"The reason we built the platform this way is that it is for areas you are truly mobile - in the gym, in a car, on a bike, on a hike, areas where the phone really isn't meant for," he says.
