A closer look
Amazon Alexa was inspired by the conversational computer systems featured in the original Star Trek television series, aiming to create an omnipresent ambient intelligence for the home. The engineering team specifically chose the wake word Alexa because it contains a hard consonant that voice recognition software can easily distinguish from everyday background chatter, and as a nerdy homage to the ancient Library of Alexandria. What started as an ambitious science fiction dream to build a helpful digital companion has predictably devolved into a deeply cynical consumer reality. Instead of utilizing this incredibly sophisticated cloud-based neural network to solve complex calculations or manage advanced starship diagnostics, we mostly just yell at a plastic cylinder to set a fifteen-minute pasta timer and complain when it aggressively tries to sell us discounted paper towels
