Need service? Talk to the room

VOICE recognition is not a new phenomenon. It has been around ever since your mother hollered: "Your father wants to speak with you, NOW!" as you crept home from a school date, way past the curfew hour with a déshabillé gin-soaked "study" companion in tow. It was a very accurate system and ears were regularly boxed and bottoms paddled to ensure it stayed in trim.

Fast forward to modern times and you cannot open your mouth without some device instantly responding to offer some recondite gem. Phones, televisions, tablets, radios, cars, vending machines, lifts, and even refrigerators may join in the chorus as you strain to enunciate just right - in your best American accent - to silence your crazed hyperventilating gizmos.

There's something about that disembodied voice and flat atonal digital delivery that makes you want to actually run outside and hug a human.