Integrating Innovation, Technology, and Higher Education

Steve Adubato goes one-on-one with Dr. Joel Bloom, President of NJIT, from the Amazon Alexa VOICE Summit to discuss the impact of the VOICE Summit on NJIT and the Newark community. They also discuss the important relationship between innovation, technology and higher education.

9/24/18 #2166

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Hi, this is Steve Adubato coming to you from the campus of NJIT - that's the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Why are we here? This is, in fact, the Voice Summit, sponsored by Amazon Alexa. You've got about 2,500 folks from all over the country, programmers, people involved in something called artificial intelligence, all about voice. What does voice mean in our lives today? What could, and what will, voice mean in our lives tomorrow? That's what the people are here talking about at NJIT, at this Voice Summit. We'll be interviewing those folks and bringing everything you've ever wanted and needed to know about voice to you right now. This is the President of NJIT, our good friend, Doctor Joel Bloom. Good to see you Joel. Good to see you Steve. You know, you told me about this, you told a lot of people about this a while back. We are in a Voice Summit at NJIT. It was expected to have about 1,500 people, it's getting closer to 2,400-2,500 folks. Who are these people? And why are they in Newark at NJIT? So let me start with a simple factoid. Sure. Go ahead. As we speak, we say about 140 words a minute. If we were typing, it's 50 words a minute. Go ahead. That's why people are here. So who's here? So the rate at which you can teach and learn, the rate at which you can communicate, voice is outstanding as compared to writing or typing. So in this... today's age of information, information, data, data, data, speed is important. So the idea of having a keyboard in a couple years is gone. Really? Really. Don't invest in keyboards technology. Don't? It's voice? Because it's all voice. So who's here? The people who want to be engaged in this technology. They're the developers, they are the people who want to market, I mean, you know, have you bought anything yet through any of the voice technologies? I have. You go online. You're sitting there, and in minutes your order is done. Think about doing that with your keyboard on a computer, two times, three times longer, you got to call up the website, then you've got to... processing the name of the company, then you've got to find the product somewhere, you can do it all three, four times faster by voice. Devil's Advocate... I gotta do Devil's Advocate, Joel. Absolutely. So people... myself, others, who are in the communication business, we are in the human... Right. ...communication business. My question is, where does it leave the rest of us who truly believe that human interaction...? While technology has its place, that... I mean..."