I really love my new digital voice assistant: I call him HAL

Way back in 1968, the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey featured a main character that was a forerunner, in a sense, of today's digital assistants.

The HAL 9000, a supercomputer endowed with artificial intelligence, ran a spaceship and interacted with astronauts using a soft, calm voice and an unblinking red lens for an eye. HAL - short for heuristically programmed algorithmic computer - was the creation of novelist Arthur C. Clarke.

Today's digital assistants, of course, can be customized with a variety of voices and taught to turn things on or off in the home or play a favorite song.