"The question is, can't we change the way in which people interact with machines such that they are much better to anticipate what you want to do and provide a richer form of interaction," Mundie said.

He compares this shift to a historical one that Nathan Myhrvold, his former boss, once pointed out. Myhrvold noted that video cameras were first used to record plays. Not until a few years later did people realize that they could create something new and glue together pieces of film to make a movie. "That's kind of what we're going through with computing," Mundie said.

As an example of what he envisions, Mundie showed off the latest version of a digital personal assistant. The company showed off the first version about a year ago and the application was one that would let Microsoft employees speak to an image of a person on a computer screen to schedule a shuttle bus on campus.