Today's Offbeat Amazon Article by Stephen Harrison

What I really learned from 122 Echo-uttered quotes

When I’m getting ready in the mornings, I often ask my Amazon Echo for the weather forecast or a flash news briefing. Lately, though, I’ve been experimenting with asking the device for an inspirational quotation. After doing this for weeks, I became curious: how does Amazon pick these quotes?

For my second Source Notes column, I wrote about what I learned from investigating quotes from Amazon Alexa and how certain information is prioritized.

>> Read the article: Amazon Echo's Daily Quotes skill and where internet knowledge comes from.

In other news: Andrew S. Curran recently wrote the fabulous book Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely about the 18th-century father of the modern encyclopedia. Last week Curran appeared on a BBC 3 radio show where he was kind enough to mention my contemporary work. Here's the recording and his "shout-out" is around the 5:30 mark.

A happy Presidents' Day weekend to all!

Best,
Stephen