Google and the “help” effect – La Stampa

Consumer technology has always sought the wow effect. The launch of each new product was accompanied by amazing promises and special effects. In this Apple was the leader, but even the Microsoft conventions for a certain period were spectacular; and the same effect then sought Facebook (even before the last announcement of the Metaverse with Mark Zuckerberg traveling in time and space, it should be remembered when Zuckerberg himself showed up at an event to launch the first virtual reality viewers and all bystanders in the audience looked at him through the viewers.

Rather creepy, my kids would say. The impression is that that season is temporarily closed. The strongest clue comes from Google’s latest convention for its developers. A historically very important event, which for example a few years ago was used by the CEO to make one of the first demonstrations of a voice assistant managed by an artificial intelligence that was perfectly capable of booking a table in a restaurant on the phone without anyone coming realized it was software.

At the convention a few days ago, however, the most recurring word was “help”, to help. The New York Times has calculated that it has been used more than 50 times. Starting from the slogan that reads in English: “When it comes to helping, we can’t help but help.”. When it comes to helping we can’t resist doing it. To help. Putting technology at the service of people. Someone defined it as a more modest vision of the future than for example Google Glass, which made the wow effect and then failed, or flying cars or who knows. But trying to put technology back in the service of people here and now, not in the metaverse, is perhaps what we need.