MindMeld, an app that’s considered something of a futuristic computing system, received a very large investment from Samsung, Intel, and Telefónica. Dubbed ‘Siri on steroids,’ MindMeld can listen to an eight-person conversation and suggest information that the speakers involved might want to see, before they know they want to see it. Users have, until now, responded well to apps like Google Now that sift through personal data to provide useful info at the correct time and place, but MindMeld takes it several steps further. It’s easy to imagine that the app’s future will include TV screens and telephones that listen in on every conversation and suggest a recipe with, say, a particular brand’s food product included, or a similar TV show on a particular network, or a new movie being released that week – the possibilities go on and on. How consumers will respond to the subtle – and perhaps not as subtle – branding and advertising possibilities of such a technology will need to be fleshed out as it grows, but for the time being it’s important to note that tech companies are, quite literally, buying into the notion of “anticipatory computing” as the next major step forward in the way content and information are delivered to consumers.