How Steve Wozniak predicted CES 2012

When Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak visited Australia last year, he made predictions about where the technology industry would be going over the next year. Almost six months to the day, Wozniak's predictions have come to fruition in Las Vegas in the form of voice-controlled everything at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Steve Wozniak
(Credit: Luke Hopewell/ZDNet Australia)

"I think that something that understands natural voice deeper and deeper and runs every app on your phones and your computers will be operated by voice in the future," Wozniak said at the time.

Since then, the world has seen the wildly popular Siri voice-command service emerge for the iPhone 4S, and, more recently, we've seen the emergence of everything from voice-controlled TVs to game consoles.

Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo, LG, Nuance, Intel and Ford have all introduced their own flavour of voice control and command at this year's CES.

At the time he made the prediction, Wozniak said that voice control is popular, because users can easily access features without tapping tiny devices.

"I love whenever I can speak and not have to go through the procedures. Maybe it's because things have gotten so small it's become hard to tap, and when you're in a car it's even worse," he said.

He also said that mankind has already lost the "war" with machines, as we have become too reliant on them for our survival.

"We create this level of intelligence that's more than us, this intelligence that's more than humans. We created it accidentally, without knowing it. We created a whole bunch of our brain work on Google, but we didn't intend to get that result.

"We've accidentally put so much in place that we can't get rid of it and out of our lives," Wozniak said.

CES 2012 runs until Friday in Las Vegas.