Siri
A company spun out of SRI released an application that understood a spoken request and carried out the action itself, booking a table or calling a taxi.
Why it matters
Voice became a command to a system that acts for the user, rather than a query to a search engine.
The project grew out of DARPA's CALO programme, the largest personal-assistant effort of its time. The application spent two weeks in the store before Steve Jobs took an interest; Apple bought the company in April 2010, by contemporary reports for a sum rumoured at around two hundred million dollars. Siri shipped as part of the iPhone in October 2011. Forty years separate this from Shakey, built at the same laboratory.