Recently I wrote about one of my favorite bits of technology that I use just about all day, every day. Well, here’s my second must-have bit of technology.
Hint: It’s unlikely that any modern parent will name their kid this…
Yep: Alexa.
Loads of people have an Echo device, which have Alexa on them. 100 million according to the folks over at The Verge. We have five different Echo devices in out house, and we’re constantly asking “Alexa, what’s the temperature outside? Alexa, what’s the score of the Michigan State basketball game? Alexa, flash briefing,” and on, and on.
We use Alexa to set timers in the kitchen, wake us up from naps (yes, we take naps. We have to if we want to get enough sleep with two kids under two years old!), turn our Philips Hue lights on and off, and about a thousand other things each week. There’s rarely a question we ask her that she can’t answer, but it does happen.
When I travel away from home I often find myself saying “Alexa…oh, right, we’re not at home”. in those cases I switch over to to Alexa’s cousin, Siri. A few yeats ago I would have never guessed that one of my go-to pieces of technology would be a speaker that I can have a conversation with. Which leads me to wonder, what will my go-to piece of technology be five years from now?