Order pizza from your mobile. Extra cheese, thin crust. Book a hotel, rent a car, pay your bills. Sing your kids a lullaby. All from your mobile. But now there’s a built-in gar gizmo that let’s your fleet manager know if you went through a stop sign. There a clip-on doodad that measures your heart rate while you’re jogging and then lets you read your detailed chart on a website.  

Wave goodbye to the wires that once propelled our lives. Nowadays, if it’s not wireless, it ain’t worth it.  

What did we do to deserve this? We launched wireless to get us to talk to one other on our big, oversized, heavy mobile phones. That was cool. For nearly two decades, we’ve been yacking non-stop and it’s been great.

But of late, for chipmakers, it’s not survival of the fittest �it’s survival of the wireless. Seems like those of us who make receiver chipsets for a living, might have to adopt a little M2M. That’s machine-to-machine and some say it will change the world. In a word, it’s hardcore wireless communications that does not require a live human in the mix.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, Qualcomm showcased a coffee machine that would turn on right from your tablet just cos the chip inside told it so. Global wireless stuff is linking computers, tablets and phones, but now it’s also connecting your home’s ceiling fans to vacuum cleaners to intercoms while you’re flying over the North Pole.

We’re going to miss the days when a phone was just a phone. Today, our mobile devices talk to us. They sound alarms, ping us to pick up the kids, direct us to the closest gas station open after midnight, and we can get the evening news �broadcast live in the back seat of our SUV. These things still require a little T-L-C and a real live finger to swipe a screen.

I’m not willing to give all that up - yet. “But hey, can ya speak up, cos my PC just turned on my washing machine, blender, and my DVD â€?oh, and there goes the dog.Â