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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick

Voxbox  
  An intelligent home agent.  

This is another of the various ideas for what amounts to an intelligent agent or home manager. Although it seems farfetched to have enough intelligence to interpret human speech and create a response packed into an alarm clock (although this device serves other functions), when this kind of technology pays back its original investment, it will be cheap. Cheap enough to add "smart" to just about any common object.

Yawning, he sat up in bed and stretched.

"It's exactly 9:14 a.m.," announced the voxbox implanted in the side of the bed.

"Thanks for the information."

From Tekwar, by William Shatner.
Published by Ace/Putnam in 1989
Additional resources -

There's also one in the shower. Another example of the same idea is found in The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert; he calls it the Daily Schedule.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Tekwar
  More Ideas and Technology by William Shatner
  Tech news articles related to Tekwar
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