Today Microsoft announced a new strategy to help people communicate more effectively in an age of increasingly complex and overloaded mediated communication vehicles.  This was seen as big news to many business leaders and the story appeared prominently in the WSJ.  However, I think the majority of folks may still be missing the point.  This is not about the next techno-gadget or even about your phone.  It is bigger than that.

HCI, or Human Computer Interaction, is something Microsoft has always been exceptional at.  Just look at the innovations in how a user interacts with their computer that have emanated from our company over the last 20 years.  It is truly amazing that the "personal computer" became so personal in such a short time.  But it has not always been about the computer, rather it has always been what the technology can do to help make our world a better place.

In our information economy, we have come to expect information at our fingertips through devices that we rarely perceive as a "computing device".  These are things we call our PDA's, our phones, navigation systems, voicemail, our tablets, our laptops, and even our MP3 players.  We want rich user experiences with multi-modal delivery options--voice, video, graphics, and IM all at the same time-ubiquitously.   Technology has truly made the world a smaller place, and I am proud to be part of the next era of innovation as we make the process of communicating via mediated methods even  more transparent. 

I can envision a day when we really don't think or distinguish between face-to-face interaction and mediated interactions.  Conducing a meeting will have similar levels of richness and potentially greater reach through new technologies.  Doctors will be able to effectively collaborate with their peers to solve some of the world's most perplexing diseases (AIDS, Avian Flu, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s...).   Students will be able to learn from the best educators in the world regardless of their present longitude and latitude--bringing cutting edge to the most remote Indian reservations in North America.  Families will be able to stay connected across geo-political and time boundaries.  Not to sound like a commercial, but this is the true power of people and surprisingly something we have been doing for a while.  It seems now the economics and technology are converging at a pace to make this real, and that is exciting.