This timeline is such a mishmash of mediocrity. Voice assistants could have been a vibrant ecosystem of different personalities, like say buying a Darth Vader voice pack or having your computer sound like a snooty English butler..
There's a great little game series called Megaman Battle Network (Rockman.exe in Japan) which diverges from the mainline by showing an alternate universe where scientists focused on AI instead of robotics, resulting in a world where "Navis" are ubiquitous.
I wonder, what if our early software engineers focused on bringing natural voice control to CLIs, before perfecting GUIs first?
There's a great little game series called Megaman Battle Network (Rockman.exe in Japan) which diverges from the mainline by showing an alternate universe where scientists focused on AI instead of robotics, resulting in a world where "Navis" are ubiquitous.
I wonder, what if our early software engineers focused on bringing natural voice control to CLIs, before perfecting GUIs first?