Living with a conversational object – Simon Collison – Medium

Of course, I've had a voice assistant on my phone for years, but we rarely talk; the main exception being those evenings where we might interrogate it for fun. Such play will typically stray from affable tyre-kicking -- "What kind of Pokemon is Squirtle?" A few months ago I finally bought a smart speaker: a dedicated conduit through which the Internet can penetrate my kitchen. I was determined to forge a valuable relationship with the hefty, fabric-wrapped cylinder, and began by immediately changing the "wake word" to something less gendered, dropping a syllable in the process. Enthusiastically, I set about testing it carefully in real scenarios, eager to identify our combined strengths.