Beyond Mice and Menus

In 2005 at the University of Washington, Barbara Grosz of Harvard hosted a
colloquium on collaborative systems, where she talked about her research on getting computers to interact nicely with people.

As one example, she shows a program which works with a word processor to automatically lookup journal references when the operator types hints that a reference is needed. This is kind of software is relatively simple to construct (if you know some good sites to find the references), but can over time save researchers hours.

After this she discussed computer programs that work in a shared environment with people where each participant has its objective, and considers how programs can learn to cooperate with people by sharing resources to help both participants achieve their goals more efficiently than if they didn't collaborate.

These examples are just a glimpse into where software will be going in the near future. Check it out!