There seems to be a missing market segment in XPPCs, extremely powerful personal computers. Computers far more powerful than for existing software.
One concept is to have several computers bundled together, yet acting in a compartmentalized, yet parallel fashion, much like our brains.
To start with, an entire sub computer acts as the human interface. Not just with typical I/O, but with voice recognition and expression. It is in a continual learning mode to achieve full communications symbiosis with its user. You have a conversation with your computer.
Closely tied in is another sub computer singularly for artificial intelligence. Its purpose is both to command the rest of the computers, but also for “abbreviation”, so that instead of issuing a long linear progression of commands to the computer, a simple command is given, and the AI “knows” what to do. It is the brain behind the speech and hearing.
Since most computing is repetitive and habitual, this is not as difficult as it sounds, but it is far more complex than mere macro operations.
Another sub computer is a “research” computer. Also an AI, it performs “smart searches”. The value of doing this is obvious with even a 250Gb hard drive. If it can just predict half a dozen potential subdirectories to search, it will find things much faster than if it searches the whole hard drive. But extrapolate such searches to the Internet, and you have what amounts to a “Super Google”.
If you see any information that looks interesting, it is preserved and organized like bookmarks, but as data. Imagine if every interesting fact you saw while surfing was preserved in a recoverable manner, and could be quickly recovered. Every subject under the sun, and organized.
Sub computer after sub computer, with the whole being greater than the parts. When software comes along, it joins with the “brain”, to make a better brain.
Give it time--I'm sure they'll be able to shrink it all down someday.