The last 20 years taught us that imperfect software can still be useful (see any web app). And that some good ideas take a long time to become useful (see tablet computers). Also, until recently, automatic translation was a joke, for similar reasons. No longer: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.asahi.com/&sl=ja&tl=en It still has a long way to go, but a computer currently translates Japanese better than most humans, and that can already be useful.