be able to function without learning anything more than a few commands and
a button push, it gets really strange.

The idea of illiterate and uneducated people who have enough money or credit
to own cellphones, computers and ROBOTs is frightening. Asimov used the idea of
a robot baby sitter, Clarke used the idea of a robot (trust me, HAL was as much of a
robot as a computer) ship, and so did Frank Herbert, in a novel called
'Destination: Void', about a cyborgic generation ship that eventually became more than
the sum of it's parts.

There are piles of people who are barely functioning in the literacy race who are Trekkies. They watched the shows and absorbed
the new age philosophy oozed by the script wroughters and completely
missed the fact that just because it is on the tube doesn't mean
it has any validity. There is a Tim Allen and Alan blahblah and Sigourney Weaver movie called 'Galaxy Quest' that just happens to star that guy who played Zaphod Beeblebrox in another movie that deals with the concept of aliens taking a 'Star Dreck' like show and considering it to be an 'historical document'.

The time may be coming upon us when all our toys, computers, audio recordings, PDAs and stuff will be incorporated into an Android. A mechanical simulacrum that walks like a man, talks like a woman and knows everything we need to to know in order to function. An android will look like a human, and be able to perform tasks so efficiently that a human need never learn to do them again. Imagine having in your home a device that can recite your favorite comedy routines using the voice and the mannerisms of the comic who created it. Imagine having a device in your home that can pick up a guitar and play like Clapton or Jimmy Page and play your favorite tunes note for note with every tone and quaver in place. Imagine having a device in your home that can cater to every physical whim you can think of, from culinary to sexual to surgical, so that you never have to fantasize or engage in wishful thinking again. Imagine having a device in your home that can recite from any book ever published or build any item that has ever been designed. Imagine having a device that can do your homework for you or your taxes or replace you in your workplace, leaving you sitting at home watching another device reenacting the performances of Houdini.

Boggles the tiny mind, doesn't it? Only problem is, how would one pay for this thing? Don't worry, the mega-corporations and the governments of the world will find a way. Because while you are being wined, dined, comforted and entertained by this device, other devices are monitoring what goes on and using sensors and complex algorhythms to make sure that you are not doing anything the corporations and the governments do not want you to do. Political correctness can creep into anything.

And when you die, probably with the compassionate help of this device, having had no job, produced no offspring and written no magnum opuses, what will happen to the device? Will it just wait patiently until the next occupant moves into your space? Or will it be moved on to perform other more useful tasks, like building the next generation of automaton, which will be used to colonize mars so that the mineral wealth there can be used to build space ships so that other more suitable devices can seek out more lucrative markets in the galaxy?

And when all the humans and animals have been replaced by devices, what will they do with their spare time, having no more masters to be subservient to?

Will they try to assimilate each other, until there is nothing but a single hive mind that wants to play God, but can't remember where it put the keys necessary to open the library?