Sentient living spaces

I'm excited because I think I'll be able to talk to our heating and cooling systems this week. 

When I got my first Echo device, I was pretty self-conscious about talking to it. I used to openly mock people with those tiny, in-ear bluetooth headsets back in the day, because no matter how popular it got, and how much my brain knew that someone was probably on the other end, I still refused to admit that in-ear bluetooth headsets aren't an elaborate cover for multiple personality syndrome.

This guy is actually descending into madness.. and he's stoked about it!

For the record, I haven't changed my tune on this. If you're yelling "What was she thinking decorating her entire house in different shades of pink?! I mean, come on?!?" while walking down the street, I'm still gonna question your sanity. But in the privacy of your own home, if you wanna ask Alexa to tell you some jokes, you go on with yo' bad self! Everyone can use another crappy joke in their arsenal for when meetings start late.

But now, shit's getting real. My electronics can hear me and do my evil bidding, and I'm excited.

It's kind of my day job to architect thoughtfully designed content systems to power our the next gen of smart content (ahem, voice and bot platforms), so it's not just a nice-to-have for me. It's a moral imperative that I start putting the full court press on Alexa, lest I design something shitty. But I wasn't actually excited about this homework until this very moment...

I'm cold all the time, so now I'm wondering how much whining my Alexa will be willing to act on. Can I train it to acknowledge my sad sighs and translate that into warming action? Its an academic exercise as much as a real life value add for me to figure out if Alexa NLP is gonna be able to translate, "Yo! Alexa, I'm freezing. Fix that shit now" into a command to turn the temperature up.

Me getting warm just turned into professional development and shit.

AND THEN, the obvious follow on is whether a Roomba can be modded out to add a claw or hook appendage that can be used to grab blankets. Would I need to design a chat skill for that? One that reacts to the command "Alexa, get me my fuzzy blanket NAO"?

And then, I need to get a cat. I'm allergic to cats, but if I'm gonna have a robot claw Roomba it needs to be piloted by a cat. A cat with a host of extremely condescending facial expressions who is dressed up like the best captain of all time, Mal from Firefly. Feline Roomba captain Mal and a pallet of antihistamine would really complete the vision for me. 

Do the thing! Engage! Excelsior!!! 

Until I can fully realize this dream, I'll be imagining all of the existential conversations I can have with Alexa and Nest about my internal temperature, but I promise you that I won't do it loudly while walking down the street. I'll keep that private. Oh, and I'll keep a running list of bad Alexa jokes for the next time we're waiting for that call to start.