15. Proactive Computing: In the future, I’ll talk to my computer!

Over 60 years ago, an eight-year-old boy named Jack Weeks was playing in his garage when he opened a large box and discovered something his father had been hiding from the world: a head.1

It had been there since the start of World War II.

His father John was an engineer at Westinghouse, then a prominent appliance company in Mansfield, Ohio. The company was known for its clothing irons and ovens, but John and some of his colleagues were more passionate about something else: a massive male figure who was a towering seven feet tall and weighed nearly 300 pounds;2 a frame so large Westinghouse paraded him around the 1939 New York World’s Fair to greet attendees at the Westinghouse ...

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