I love my Amazon Echo.  I don’t consider myself hip, but Christmas 2015 found an Echo under our tree and it has been an affair to remember.  All the things it can do – play music tracks and radio stations, tell jokes, capture my shopping and to-do lists, answer trivia questions, wake me up, time my meals, hail an Uber, and control smart appliances – for me makes this device one of most indispensable items I own.

Voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri are changing the way we consume computing power.  Apps are so 2013.  Why get a reminder app when you can dictate your to-do’s to a list?  Why have an app for every one of your favorite radio stations when you can call your station from Alexa?  Why type when you can talk?

Talking is our natural means of communicating. Voice technology is the means toward transforming the way we interact with computers.  This technology could make texting obsolete!  (Pause for a minute to savor this future…)  Fewer distracted drivers, more attentive students, less neck and thumb pain, not to mention more coherent messages.

Improvements in the technology and privacy issues aside, consumers will continue to adopt voice technology as it transforms the nature of computing and how we interact with our machines.