Has anyone noticed the subtle change that's taken place over the last few years where the role of machine serving man has reversed?
As I write this I'm besieged by the clarion call of various appliances in my home all demanding my immediate attention. It's hard to resist the call of the washing machine insisting that it be emptied, or the strident chirps of the dishwasher. How many of us could harden our hearts to the plaintive cries of a starving mobile phone needing to be recharged?
I seem to spend most of my time these days caring for and comforting the devices that allegedly make my life easier and give me more spare time... Spare time that is spent running around responding to the bleeps, buzzing and alarms that these time-saving machines make with terrifying regularity. 
Even the family car isn't a safe haven! I used to have a car that nagged me with an annoying female American accent to "fasten my seatbelt" and pester me to check oil levels, tyre pressures, etc every time I turned on the ignition and wouldn't start until I obeyed. I begged the car dealer to turn off the voice but even he couldn't find a way to silence her.
Then there's the horror of the in-car GPS. The machine-made instructions that we slavishly obey even when we know in the back of our minds that we shouldn't be driving through a farmyard or along a rutted track when all we wanted to do was go to Dorchester... 
When I was a child most of the Sc-Fi stories were about super computers or robots taking over the world. They were wrong – it's the tiny computers and kitchen robots that have done it, and no one but me seems to be resisting the invasion!
I would continue, but something in the kitchen is bleeping. Got to go.... 
