“Alexa wants to make your life easier, more meaningful, and more fun by helping you voice control your world — both at home and on the go,” Amazon explains. Certainly, that was true in our household, privacy concerns notwithstanding, until my son figured out that he could make Alexa fart and my daughter realized she could have Alexa play “Hamilton” every waking minute.

Still, that behavior can’t be blamed on Alexa, but rather on two particular preteens. Alexa was still the arbiter of information, able to settle quickly debates and answer questions that in my youth would send me to my school’s set of World Book Encyclopedias.