How did we ever cope?

I read with some amusement 4 or 5 years ago about a fridge that restocks itself - it had a barcode that you could use to scan your food, and when you had finished, the fridge helped you to put another shopping list together. The problem with it, was that you had to scan the food in and out of the fridge, and you still needed a wireless device that could talk to the fridge to access your new list. It would have been quicker to attach your previous week's list to the fridge on a piece of paper and cross things out when they depleted.

Well, now devices are getting cleverer. When Dyson's new vacuum fails, you ring up the parts centre, hold the cleaner to the phone, and its internal chip sends a report down the phone to reorder the new part! (story here).That's assuming, of course that it isn't the chip that goes wrong.

Well, Microsoft seem to have joined the fray. They are currently working on an alarm clock which intelligently knows when to wake you up. You input your home location, and your work location, the time you intend to start work and how long you need to get ready, and off it goes. It checks traffic reports, works out how long the journey will take, and wakes you up at the right time.

The day I trust myself to that kind of 'help' is the day I'll be late for work, I'm convinced of it.