What do you want the computer to do?

If only I knew. It could start by making me some chicken noodle soup. Answer my emails, snicker at “amusing” forwards, compulsively check out-of-date band websites: all that tedious stuff I didn’t do ten years ago, or even five years ago. Turn a series of dot points and references into an essay, turn an essay into a blistering critique that lays waste to an increasingly arid and morally bankrupt academic landscape. When it won’t install a simple linguistics program, I’d like it to do the honourable thing and pour coffee on its own keyboard, or for a rock and roll touch throw itself out the window into a swimming pool. Shut down, log off, restart. I want it to introduce me to strange and exotic people and customs from faraway lands. Iron my shirts, have a taxi waiting if I’m late for the tram, sit me down and ask me the tough questions about where I think my life is going. Essentially, I want a cross between a PA, a ghostwriter and Tyler Durden. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.