A cultural faux-phenomenon that is designed to applaud communications technologies that colonize one another’s functions, so that, for instance, your coffee-maker can wake you up in the morning with elevator music, and not incidentally, convince you that life is better and more exciting. The introduction of microchips into mechanical technologies has had some minor benefits, but if you listen to the corporate futurists, it’s going to solve every problem from fridge stink to international hunger. In fact, it’s going to make the basic devices we need in order to live more complex, more expensive, and less reliable. It will also lead to complicated litigation with the CRTC and the FCC and result in more corporate raiding and goldfish-eating riots within the telecommunications industry. Is it really worth all this trouble just so we can have simulated sex with our toasters?