, Columnist
Control the Operating System, Control the Future
Most users will probably fall in line with their voice-controlled system's defaults.
This article is for subscribers only.
My thoughts tend to go to dark places these days. And so when I watched Google on Wednesday trot out one after another of its homegrown computing devices for every task and every nook of our homes, I went straight to dystopia: R.I.P. digital competition.
Today most people experience computing through devices controlled by a handful of companies: principally Microsoft and Apple for traditional computers and Google and Apple (and increasingly Chinese companies with customized versions of Google's Android) for smartphones. Feel free to throw in Amazon.com Inc., too, for tablets and TV sets.