WE all know our household appliances are getting smarter

All work to get techno to play*

By Sheryl-Lee Kerr

* a favourite column

WE all know our household appliances are getting smarter. And not because their external study course certificates keep arriving in the mail accompanied by job offers for a microwave with good prospects and multiple heat settings.

We know this because we can no longer figure out how to turn on our VCRs without first consulting a NASA engineer, a chocolate supplier, and swotting over operating manuals thicker than Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Of course, some would argue the chocolate supplier isn't exactly essential for working out a VCR's functions. I say speak for yourself.)

The last VCR I bought was so intelligent that you could whack a set of Tonka-truck wheels and an aerial on it and it would have given Sojourner a run for its money around Mars. And it would have played tapes of The Footy

Show while it was at it.

Well okay, it was mostly smart.

But in fact, and this is absolutely true, my VCR can also issue Russian instructions. I can only presume it was either made there or, when I'm not looking, it transmits the secrets of my date-scone recipes back to

the motherland. (In which case, I am SO sorry, comrades.)

I always had my suspicions about so-called smart technologies ever since the Iraqi war, when bombs were dubbed “smart”. If a mass killing device is smart, then heaven help what the Americans call stupid.

Thus it’s with some trepidation that I learn even the humble Barbie doll is getting smarter.

A London wire report quotes Internet guru Professor Nicholas Negroponte as saying: “Advances in technology could see toys and household appliances going online to download information and software upgrades to

regularly reprogram themselves.

“Barbie dolls will be intelligent, networked toys that will be able to speak any language. They will be able to educate themselves by downloading different language software from the Internet using mobile Internet capability that will be built into them. It could be that children will learn French from Barbie.”

And Professor Negroponte adds that, in the future, there will be “no need to buy the latest washing machines or dishwashers, as old models can be updated online”. Payments would be taken online for each wash.

At first glance, this seems revolutionary. Until you stop to think what it could mean if you got an overly bright Barbie doll with the discretionary spending power of your credit card. The idea of Babs kicking back, downing Internet-bought Scotch and Valium after a long, hard day of

French tutelage is bad enough.

But do you have any idea what Dream Barbie's expensive tastes will run to? Don't be surprised if she has a pony parked out front when you get home, and has a deal done with your dishwasher to hide the paper trail.

Mon dieu. Now that's scary.