The Graphical User Interface will soon give way to the rise of the Conversational User Interface.

40 years ago only people that could speak the language could communicate with computers. Then came the GUI and there was a translation layer that could allow humans to speak with computers. Now computers can understand our language — natural language processing, Siri, Google, all major leaps forward. The inevitable next step is just speaking directly with computers, and the services built on top of their intelligence.

When the GUI is stripped away, all that’s left is the conversation and that’s where we’re heading next — the Conversational User Interface.

Facebook Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp, iMessage, are all the trojan horses of direct-to-computer communication on the consumer side. Slack on the business side.

The players that inhabit this space, or at least grok its importance early on, will be the clear winners.

Forget “there’s an app for that” — what’s next is “there’s a chat for that.”