"Computer! Turn on the lights!" Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory―the largest A.I. lab in the world―strides into his ninth-floor office in Cambridge, MA. Despite his demand, the room stays dark. "Computer!" he repeats, sitting down at the conference table. "I'm...already...listening," comes a HAL-like voice from the wall. Brooks redirects his request toward a small microphone on the table, this time enunciating more clearly: "Turn on the lights!" A pleasant tweeting sound signals digital comprehension. The lights click on. Brooks grins, his longish, graying curls bouncing on either side of his face, and admits his entrance was a somewhat rough demonstration of "pervasive computing." That's a vision of a post-PC future in which sensors and microprocessors are wired into cars, offices and homes―and carried in shirt pockets―to retrieve information, communicate and do various tasks through speech and gesture interfaces. "My staff laughs at me," says Brooks, noting he could have simply flicked the light switch, "but I have to live with my technology."
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