Day 4.305: You are the new paperclip!

I got a new phone yesterday. It was something of a surprise. On Tuesday I did not know there was any plan to replace my work mobile phone, by Thursday lunchtime it was in my hands.  It's an iPhone 4S and today I had chance to play with the latest successor to the Microsoft paperclip: Siri.

There are some minor differences between the early 2000's Microsoft Assistant and the early 2010's iOS personal assistant, but the basics are the same.

Whereas the older version would pop up a crude animation with a speech bubble saying "You seem to be writing a letter, would you like help with that?" before going on to completely wreck all your formatting, the newer model will listen intently to any free-form question you utter into the microphone and try, with all the backing that natural language interpretation and the internet can provide, to come up with an answer or at least some reasonable response.

Do you doubt the connection?  I can help put your doubts to rest - here's a conversation Siri and I just had:

She can also help with real things like hotel reservations, driving directions, sending a text or an email, but who needs any of that?