One thing that always irks me about things like "56 percent faster" is the potential confusion. On the one hand, it's fine to say you do things 56% faster: that describes a rate of speed, and now the rate is 156% of baseline. But when they say, "it can help users find and begin a maintenance task in almost half the usual time," I'm not sure if 64% of the time is really "almost" half, or now if the writer seems to think they did it in 56% of the time.
Still, pretty neat. I can't wait until this stuff trickles down into the public sector (more than just a handful of iPhone apps).
The next 20 years are going to be incredible. Think about technology like this applied to the medical field, or tourism, or food preparation. Of course, some of these tasks will probably be made irrelevant by robotics soon after this kind of technology becomes widespread, but I'm sure we'll find uses for it.
I think it will be far easier to sell the relevant guilds on augmented humans than it will be to sell them on robots. They can continue to collect dues from the humans, after all. (Granted, they'll fight this tooth and nail anyway. 56% more productive is just another way to say 36% less mechanics.)
I was thinking of industries (airlines) where you can't be a mechanic without being a member in good standing of the Right Honorable Order of Artificiers.
Still, pretty neat. I can't wait until this stuff trickles down into the public sector (more than just a handful of iPhone apps).