Apart from the belief that the animated personality would be visual, this is a near-perfect description of Siri and similar assistants. True.
It seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when smartphone penetration among teenagers is less than 50%. (My own social circle seems to have below-average smartphone penetration, so I may not be well-calibrated.)
When you call 5 partially true and 20 partially false, which are you saying is more correct? 5 seems more correct to me, but “partially false” sounds more correct than “partially true”.
Beyond musical recordings, images, and movie videos, the most popular type of digital entertainment object is virtual experience software.
Does this mean virtual experience software is more popular than the others, or that it’s the most popular type of digital entertainment when you look beyond the others?
It seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when smartphone penetration among teenagers is less than 50%
Ubiquitous is one of those words that are hard to quantify. “most people have one” is false; “most people know someone who has one” is true.
My scale would go: true, partially true, partially true and partially false, partially false, false.
Does this mean virtual experience software is more popular than the others, or that it’s the most popular type of digital entertainment when you look beyond the others?
Both statements are wrong, at least according to the Economist, that put games just second to movies but above music. Again, ambiguity can’t be used to make a false statement true...
It seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when smartphone penetration among teenagers is less than 50%.
It also seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when, on top of that, iOS only has (as of March 2012) between 30-45% market share (depending on how you measure it), which includes numerous models of iPhone that do not have/support Siri, as well as the numerous people who have access to, but don’t primarily use Siri on their iPhones. (In my biased sample of software developer/cubicle dweller coworkers, as well as friends and family, I’d estimate maybe 5-10% of those who I know that have iPhones with Siri actually use Siri on a daily basis.)
Does this mean virtual experience software is more popular than the others, or that it’s the most popular type of digital entertainment when you look beyond the others?
By my reading, the statement is saying that music, pictures and movies are more popular than “virtual experience software”, and that VES is the next most popular.
Additionally, to respond to Stuart_Armstrong below, without a direct reference, I’d imagine that the Economist simply took into account popularity by sales data, which would ignore things like Pandora/Spotify/YouTube/Reddit usage/browsing that may happen significantly more than paid consumption of music/video (at least for certain segments of society with ubiquitous internet access).
It seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when smartphone penetration among teenagers is less than 50%. (My own social circle seems to have below-average smartphone penetration, so I may not be well-calibrated.)
When you call 5 partially true and 20 partially false, which are you saying is more correct? 5 seems more correct to me, but “partially false” sounds more correct than “partially true”.
Does this mean virtual experience software is more popular than the others, or that it’s the most popular type of digital entertainment when you look beyond the others?
Ubiquitous is one of those words that are hard to quantify. “most people have one” is false; “most people know someone who has one” is true.
My scale would go: true, partially true, partially true and partially false, partially false, false.
Both statements are wrong, at least according to the Economist, that put games just second to movies but above music. Again, ambiguity can’t be used to make a false statement true...
It also seems strange to call Siri ubiquitous when, on top of that, iOS only has (as of March 2012) between 30-45% market share (depending on how you measure it), which includes numerous models of iPhone that do not have/support Siri, as well as the numerous people who have access to, but don’t primarily use Siri on their iPhones. (In my biased sample of software developer/cubicle dweller coworkers, as well as friends and family, I’d estimate maybe 5-10% of those who I know that have iPhones with Siri actually use Siri on a daily basis.)
By my reading, the statement is saying that music, pictures and movies are more popular than “virtual experience software”, and that VES is the next most popular.
Additionally, to respond to Stuart_Armstrong below, without a direct reference, I’d imagine that the Economist simply took into account popularity by sales data, which would ignore things like Pandora/Spotify/YouTube/Reddit usage/browsing that may happen significantly more than paid consumption of music/video (at least for certain segments of society with ubiquitous internet access).