Technology in life and death

The NY Times Magazine section has some neat future-y articles this week. Read about what it's like when your house is smarter than you are, and learn how people are hacking their domestic robots so they do cool stuff.

And since the NY Times doesn't allow free access to stuff once it gets older, here is my favorite part of the article on how cell phones are changing our lives (it's the very last paragraph):

In Malaysia, she recently attended a "feast of the hungry ghosts," where Chinese Malays burn paper replicas of food. "They do it to ensure that their ancestors are well fed," Bell notes. But in recent years, they've also begun burning paper versions of mobile phones -- and even paper versions of prepaid phone cards, to make sure the phones will work beyond the grave. "They can't imagine their dead relatives existing without the latest models," Bell says. "And they wouldn't want their ancestors to be lonely." Even in death, no one wants to be cut off.