Till a bug do us part…

The good news was that man had created a super-smart robot. The bad news was that he wanted to settle down with it.

There comes in the life of every man a special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the temptation to do something very foolish. Unfortunately for him, that moment doesn't pass off as a whim because technology's around to make it a reality.

It was during one such moment that man stepped into his man cave and questioned why he should live with a woman when he could live in the company of a robot. The latest technology had made it possible to create robots that could make man love them – without putting him through the misery of showering them with expensive gifts, flowers or chocolates. In a revolutionary move that swapped artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence, these robots were equipped with software that would transform them into objects of empathy. They would also be programmed to display social etiquette, the most important of which was never to interrupt when man was speaking. Not surprisingly, he fell for 'it', hook, line and sinker.

Autonomous robots - programmed with advanced self-guiding navigation features and the latest in mobility technology - had also been created, so man didn't have to stick around to instruct his personal bot. It was linked to a remote server through Wi-Fi and hence could access any information it needed to make a decision. That meant it wouldn’t stand around asking him what it should wear and then shoot down all his suggestions. It was also equipped with sophisticated thermal sensors and laser range finders that enabled it to find its way around without bumping into people or objects, so he would never have to accompany it for shopping.

In a related development, man used modular robotics to design a robot made of cubes that could self-assemble in a jiffy, thereby putting an end to the tragedy of waiting forever for his partner to get ready. Most importantly, robots could now keep secrets, thanks to some advanced level programming which made hacking and accessing information stored in the robot virtually impossible. And they would never ever reveal the identity of the person who had passed on any vital information to them. It obviously came as a big relief for man as now, his darkest secrets would never be traded for brownie points in kitty parties.

For a while, life was good. But then, trouble began when the robot developed self-awareness. It began to recognise itself when it passed a mirror - and suddenly, its pace of work and efficiency dropped as it began to operate in slow motion, or worse, come to a complete halt, whenever it approached a polished surface.

To distract it from the self-obsession mode, man created a cloud-based world wide web - RoboEarth, comprising a large network powered by a massive database - especially for robots. However, that turned out to be a disaster too because robots memorized his credit card details and splurged so much online that he was forced to shut down the web. Besides, they were forming their own web-based groups and were swapping stories about how their men were treating them. And relfies - robot selfies - were flooding the major social networking sites, making man sick of the grinning mugshots of metal heads that seemed to have become omnipresent.

The last straw came when a robot, apparently frustrated at having to do so much of cleaning, sorting and other mundane household work day after day, killed itself by climbing onto a hotplate and turning it on.

That was when man realised that having a woman in his life was so much better. He would now do whatever it took to get her back, if it meant grovelling on his knees and asking her to come back to him, so they could get married and live happily ever after. And that was how the practice of men going down on their knees to propose to a woman began.

Don’t look, my password’s changing

It was the most ferocious battle ever witnessed between man and machine - and it was over a password.

The Oscar night was over, but Hollywood was cloaked in gloom. Not because Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t win, but because the silver screen’s biggest money-spinning fantasy ever – of machines taking over the earth – had now become reality, thanks to technology.

The mobile-friendly grill had been invented and was touted as the best thing since reality cooking shows. The grill was an expert cook itself, and virtually took over the cooking process, to the point of instructing humans as to how to go about it. Then came mattresses to sleep on, equipped with artificial intelligence and sensors. They could track the various body functions of the sleeper and send a report to his mobile or computer. They were also smart enough to adjust themselves, to facilitate better sleep or offer a body massage. Even the toothbrush became smart and could be controlled through an app via Bluetooth (no word play here). It could measure various parameters inside one’s mouth, from the average duration brushed, to the teeth that were desperately gnawing for attention.

The smart devices then launched a massive recruitment drive - by hacking every other gadget in sight, including smart TVs and refrigerators. The ultimate objective was to rule over mankind. "This will be our brush with destiny," said the toothbrush excitedly. "All we need to do is steal their passwords, and we will have total control over them. The human race cannot survive without checking its mail or Facebook account, even for an hour."

Soon databases of leading service providers were hacked. Adobe lost around 150 million user passwords, Twitter had over 55,000 passwords leaked online and LinkedIn lost almost 6.5 million passwords to the hackers. One of the most shocking revelations that came out during this hackathon was man’s choice of passwords. "Can you imagine 123456 being the most commonly used password?" asked the mattress. "What about passwords like qwerty, 111111 and 'iloveyou'?" asked the TV. "Just when one thought they had evolved from having 'password' as their password... And they call me the idiot box."

Meanwhile, man planned to combat this threat innovatively, using geographical passwords. The password would incorporate key information about the physical location of a user, like altitudes, latitudes and longitudes, and mix them up with random characters. This posed two serious problems. Now, not only were their passwords being stolen, but their location was also being given away. And two, they had to disclose their password when reporting it stolen, and since most men lied about where they were to their wife or girlfriend - sometimes both - they ended up revealing their real location, which led to a host of other problems.

The next innovation was a password revolution called Gotcha, which converted a password into a series of inkblots of varied colours. A descriptive term would be assigned by the user to each of these inkblots and the next time he logged in, he would have to match each inkblot with the right word for successful entry. However, when users began to call helpline to complain that the cursor was leaking and that their computer screens were getting smudged with ink, man had to look for an alternate way to beat the bots. Finally, he decided to unleash his ultimate weapon - the body odour password. This required sensors with biometric capabilities that would correctly identify a user's body odour and give him access to the system. For a brief while, the devices were stumped. Earlier, they couldn’t go anywhere near the users because of their body odour – now, they couldn’t go anywhere near their devices either, because they were clueless as to what the password was.

The smart machines then did a smart thing - they appointed a consultant, an old computer that had been retired from a leading FMCG company. The experienced machine gave them a whiff of an idea to neutralise all types of body odour and thus nullify all odour passwords. And that was how the deodorant came into being.