After all, he's a father of three who is not only leading one of the most significant technology companies in the world, but navigating device rules and screen time with his kids on the home front too, and I figured he would know better than anyone how to make that work in my own house (and yours) with a minimum of friction.

After an introductory Skype chat with his wife, Anu, we scheduled an interview in their home near Seattle — simple enough, or so it seemed until I got to the airport. After four delays, one cancelled flight and an in-air detour, I finally landed around 2 a.m. — minus my luggage, which apparently had never left New York. Perfect.

At 7 a.m., I raced to Target, grabbed clean clothes and made it to their house late for our interview and worried I wasn't exactly making the best impression. But when the front door opened, all my anxiety dissolved. Anu and Satya welcomed me with a warm, neighborly embrace, offering me coffee and looking for all the world like any other friendly family down the street. And that's really who they are.

"We have extreme controlled chaos in our house," Anu, 45, told me, referring to the constant motion of children, a dog and a parade of people going in and out of their hilltop home overlooking a large lake. As the wife of the CEO of Microsoft, Anu is skilled at juggling demands, raising their three kids — including a son with special needs — as typically as possible while her husband is steering the rest of us straight into the next industrial revolution, frequently described as a time in which machine intelligence will rival that of people.