My daily hour+ commute to and from work enables me to take in a variety of podcasts, a bit of SiriusXM Radio and, more recently, some quality time with Google Assistant. The latter simply means I press and hold the home button on my Galaxy phone and say, “good morning.” Google takes it from there, providing the local weather and news summaries from a variety of sources.

OK, that’s not exactly ground-breaking, but what fascinates me is where virtual personal assistants (VPAs) like Google Assistant are leading the publishing industry.

Rather that the mostly one-way interactions I have with Google Assistant today, what if the dialogue looked more like this in the future?:

Me: Good morning.

Google Assistant: Good morning, Joe. The local temperature is…

Me: Let’s skip the news. What are the new and noteworthy books in my favorite categories?

Google Assistant: There’s a new biography about Leonardo da Vinci you’ll want to know about. It’s by Walter Isaacson, the author of the Steve Jobs book you liked so much. Would you like to hear the description?

Me: Yes.

Google Assistant: To write this biography Isaacson immersed himself in da Vinci’s 7,200 pages of notebooks, which these days are spread across the map…

Me: Didn’t da Vinci spend a number of years in Florence?

Google Assistant: Yes, he was born nearby and spent 1466 through 1476 as an apprentice in the workshop of Andrea di Cion. You visited that part of Florence during the Italy vacation you and your wife Kelly took in September 2017.

Me: Please send the ebook sample to my Google Play account.

Google Assistant: OK, it’s now in your library. Would you like me to read the sample to you?

Me: Yes.

That’s more of a two-way conversation, encouraging more personalized discovery and consumption. But why does this have to be a solitary experience? Wouldn’t it be cool if VPAs could become an extension of your social network, enabling you to experience and interact with content with others?

For example, let’s say I get a couple of minutes in to today’s Marketplace podcast from NPR and I realize the topic is something my good friend Paul and I often talk about. Rather than listening to it alone, I’d like to see if Paul is available to join me. I ask Google Assistant to ping my friend with this audio greeting: “Hey Paul, it’s Joe…I’m about to listen to a Marketplace episode I think we’d both enjoy. Care to join me?”

He’s got a few minutes, so he opts in and Google opens a three-way audio channel where the podcasts plays and Paul and I can pause it at any moment to share comments, all done via voice control. Each time one of us wants to say something to the other, the podcast pauses and the two of us are able to voice chat, comparing thoughts. When we’re ready for it to start back up, we just tell Google to proceed.

This would be a nice, new way to experience a podcast with others, but how about doing the same for longer-form content, like a lecture or even a class recording? No matter where you and your friends are physically, you could use VPAs to interact with the content as a group.

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to explore the world of Google Assistant, Alexa, et al. We’re only scratching the surface of VPA potential today and these technologies can help us take the next steps in breaking free of the limitations with today’s mostly container-based content model.

Joe Wikert is director of strategy and business development at Olive Software. This post was originally published on his blog, Joe Wikert’s Digital Content Strategies, where he writes opinion pieces on the rich content future of publishing.