LAST night's midnight premiere of Star Trek into Darkness confirms the cult of the USS Enterprise thrives 47 years after the first TV episodes aired. Captain James T. Kirk, Spock and the crew have indeed managed to "live long and prosper" - as the Vulcan saying goes - at the box office as well as in fans' minds.
Apart from its incredible characters and plots, Star Trek in the 1960s offered audiences fictional technology, some of which decades later is becoming reality. "Communicators" are today's mobile phones; touch-screen "pads" resemble iPads; "phasers" are Tasers; "the universal language translators", an Android app. Telepresence has been adopted in robotics and videoconferencing. All we're waiting for is the tricorder.
Computers that could recognise human language and respond, hold conversations and follow voice commands were ubiquitous in 60s sci-fi culture, and in the Star Trek universe this fictional technology came right from the top - the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett, was not only the nurse in the original series, but also the voice of the starship's computer.
Fast forward 47 years and phone-makers are porting this voice-recognition and response capability on to our smartphones. While Apple has its personal assistant Siri, Google has been developing a powerful rival, Google Now, which is already built into newer Android phones and which two weeks ago was made available for Apple devices.
The Google love affair with Star Trek is no secret. Last year, Google vice-president of search Amit Singhal said in a tweet: "The destiny of search is to become the Star Trek computer, a perfect assistant by my side."
To further prove the point, Google codenamed its inhouse development of Google Now "Majel", after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.
But developing a voice-responsive personal assistant also makes good business sense.
Siri and a string of voice-active alternatives could be a long-term threat to orthodox Google web-based searching - and the billions of dollars that hang off it - if the Californian company doesn't place itself central to the next wave of action. And the company's decision to make Google Now available for the iPhone and iPad pitches it head-to-head against Siri.
Siri's voice-recognition capability means you can dictate emails and text messages and ask Siri to send them, ask it for directions to get home, for stock prices and information about people and places, all of which will be given to you verbally and in written form on the screen.
If it doesn't know the answer directly, Siri Googles it. Siri also accesses the Wolfram Alpha computational engine, a global repository of real-time information that is constantly updated. For example, you can ask it when sunset is in Johannesburg and Wolfram Alpha can work it out.
Still, Siri has proven frustrating at times. It misinterprets spoken language way too often, and it is US-centric. Ask it for local rugby results and none is available, but baseball results show instantly.
Siri's parsing of language no doubt will improve. But it faces real competition from Google Now, which goes beyond voice assistance to managing your day. Google Now collects data about your habits from your Gmails, calendars and Google search histories and offers suggestions on "cards" for what to do next.
Access to this information, as well as online databases and GPS, means it can perform tasks like navigate you home at night, remind you if you haven't left for the airport to catch a flight, update your sports team's results and offer updates on news stories you follow. Again, Australian data can be thin on the ground.
Google Now works effectively provided you have a Gmail account and use the Google ecosphere for searching and appointments. To entrust so much to Google will give many the jitters, but you need that leap of faith for it to work well. There are alternatives: Samsung on its phones has S-Voice, LG has Quick Voice, and Skyvi is a brand non-aligned personal assistant for Android.
Developed in Spain, the personal assistant Sherpa last week became available in Australia for Android phones, and on the surface offers much the same voice command assistance as others.
Founder Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria tells The Australian Sherpa was available for third-party developers to adapt to home automation, TV and car use. For instance, in the car and knowing your next destination, Sherpa could automatically open a navigation tool to take you there.
In Android there's also Evi and the very politically incorrect Iris app. You can ask it to tell you a joke, but you may be sorry you did. Iris ties in with Wolfram Alpha so it can tell you about places and can do maths if you ask nicely, but is more pure entertainment.
A word of caution: don't expect to get directions from Siri or Google Now if you're lost in the outback or dying of thirst in the Sahara. Both work only when you are connected to the internet, so in remote locations your only hope is to be beamed back up to mothership Enterprise.
