Remember the scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home when Scotty was trying to persuade a manufacturer to build a container to transport a twentieth-century whale into the future? Because Scotty had no money, he proposed to show the twentieth-century manufacturer how to make "transparent aluminum" in exchange for the work. Sitting down at the CAD screen, Scotty tried addressing the computer verbally. Confused, one of the others in the room handed him a keyboard, to which Scotty responded, "How quaint."

The fu...