Today, of course, you would approach the problem differently – possibly utilising a commercial coffee machine with an embedded web server that an app on your smartphone could interrogate around the time it knows you habitually get coffee, with the safety net that the machine would tweet warnings if it was out of service, needed refilling or when the coffee-ground bin was full. The “Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser” conjured up by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy suddenly seems more than just a humorous speculation.