Along with Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, these companies are in a race to become our 'personal assistant.' They want to wake us in the morning, have their artificial intelligence software guide us through our days, and never quite leave our sides.
Who are you and what breaks your heart?
Facebook lets me be lazy the way a man in a stereotypical 1950s office can be lazy. Facebook is the digital equivalent of my secretary, or perhaps my wife, yelling at me not to forget to wish someone a happy birthday or to inform me I have a social engagement this evening.
If a company has a navigation system or a database or a virtual assistant they like better, Microsoft will meet them in the middle.
I no longer file expense reports, so I no longer experience the pain of it. What if everyone had a virtual assistant to do that kind of effort... like approving time off or submitting time-off requests? We want to really encourage developers to create cool things for Slack.
What makes Siri cool is she has a personality.
Cortana, which is this nice lady, a digital lady, which you can actually use and talk to on Windows 10... You can interact with your life, your mission, your work, and add value to it.
I'd do another Cortana advert, I don't see why not.
Thinking about Amazon's restraints - the company has never tried to introduce a social network or an email service, for example - you can understand something about the future Amazon seems to envision: A time when no screen is needed at all, just your voice.
There should be an app or service that comes and packs your bag for you so you don't have to do it. A real-life Siri.
After an afternoon of interviewing Siri it turns out there are millions of questions that it can't or won't answer: How did you get my phone number? How many Siris are there? Did you have a Christmas party? Who is playing the tiny xylophone before and after each interaction? Are you spying on us, plotting the downfall of our species?
Who or what are you? Besides insufferably rude?
So I have a friend who works for me once a week. She's got e-mail, so anybody that must send an e-mail, they send it to her and she faxes it to me. Sounds like a long way of doing things, but it works for me.
