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Ridley Scott’s stunning dystopian allegory about the meaning of life, where technology ends and humanity begins, Blade Runner—from the Philip K. Dick cyberpunk novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—draws from many influences. Perhaps the strongest are the classic Fritz Lang film Metropolis and the Heavy Metal sci-fi magazines of the 1970s. The story follows gruff lawman Deckard (Harrison Ford) chasing androids called “replicants” that are nearly indistinguishable from humans.

Smart speakers, I harrumphed. That's something I'll never want, I said hubristically. A speaker's job is to sound good, isn't it? I watched in dismay as smart speakers became the fastest-growing speaker category, leaving righteous makers of good-sounding speakers in the dust. Then my roommate gave me a refurbished Amazon Echo Dot for my birthday and everything changed.

News briefs from the world of home and mobile entertainment.

In celebration of our 60th anniversary, Sound & Vision will be peeking back throughout this year at our past six decades of coverage. Given our long tenure, our editorial predecessors have reported on most of the seminal inventions in the history of consumer audio and video technology and have offered up shopping advice, which, to varying degrees, can be viewed today as either timeless or charmingly outdated. As much as possible, we will reproduce articles and reviews as they appeared, with the unedited text mated alongside the original illustrations.