I read an amazing, insightful, long-form article recently about the magic all around us that is powered by data science, machine learning, and the cloud.
The work that Microsoft research and others are doing in areas we simply are not aware of on a day-to-day basis is incredible. Using cutting-edge technology that sits on the cloud, the emerging technology in the area of autonomous human interaction is truly world-changing. Think of your favorite piece of technology at the moment -- is it something like a new mobile phone, a fitness tracker, or an IoT connected fridge perhaps? Those things are indeed amazing, but the real power behind them lies in the machine learning and data science agent backends that power the services that run on them.
It's great having a shiny new phone -- but more beneficial is an intelligent service that can read your diary and gently buzz in your pocket to remind you that you had better leave *now* for your next meeting across town, because an accident has happened on the route you will need to take and your journey time is now an estimated 30 minutes longer than expected!
Again, consider the sleek new design of the latest amazing whizzbang phablet phone you are fondling in your hand ... a thing of beauty for sure ... but really, how clever is it? ... now, think about being able to take that phone, and using Skype translator, call someone who speaks a completely different language to you, and have an automatic, almost instantaneous translation ... that my friends, is the magic of "the cloud meets machine learning meets data science."
Cortana, the virtual assistant that continues to get better and better, aims to assist you in your daily life, no matter if that is business or personal. Imagine someone at your side, a coach, a tutor, managing your time, watching that you don't make too many commitments because you already have made enough promises to deliver for the coming week -- that's available, right now.
We are going to need front end development, backend server systems, and data to power everything for quite some time to come. However, just like the world has seen a shift from consumers using laptops and desktop computing devices to mobile, we are now seeing the very fast emergence of the importance of backend processes that power the 'connected, micro-service lifestyle' (oh look, I've just coined a new phrase, you heard it here, on C# Corner first ... go me!).
In the very near future, we will see the hyper-fast growth and deep integration of small services into the consumer market (call them bots, agents, whatever). Individually they may not amount to much, a weather-watch service here, a diary-management tool there, but, altogether, integrated, they will float into our lives *just at the moment we need them*, *on whatever device/technology is at hand*, and then silently, just as quietly as they announced themselves, they will float away again. For this kind of lifestyle assistance, we won't need apps, we just need to be connected -- the intelligence built into the service, will find us and support us as needed.
I urge you to take some time out today, and read the article - it's inspiring, and gives tremendous food for thought. The article is called Invisible Revolution - here's the link.

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