What future for real pets?

Dogs are a mans best friends. Cats have been worshipped since the time of the ancient Egyptians. Parrots have talked a bit. Goldfish have...not really done a lot. For centuries, these animals have lived alongside humans in their homes but that relationship is now under threat.

The threat comes from the new wave of virtual and robot pets. It started small of course, with Tamagotchi's. Cashing in on the Pokemon craze, they were little electronic pets to keep children (and a fair few adults) amused. They weren't to last but the seeds had been sown. Robot pets with limited awareness of their surroundings were to come out. On popular computer consoles, I-Pet games have become very popular. These are just the first wave, more advanced things will come out in the future. It won't be too long before we can all have our own robot dogs like the one from the original Battlestar Galactica series.

What about real pets though? The flesh and blood ones? They'll become obsolete. The advantages of non-real pets are obvious. They won't require exercise as they won't require food, which will suit us fine as we are all heading toward a more sedentary lifestyle anyway. They won't wake you up in the middle of the night, leave 'presents' around the house or scratch up your nice new sofa. Most importantly, they won't die or at least not really.

Real animals will have to buck their ideas up. Focus on doing the things the machines can't replicate. A robot pet couldn't have the spontaneity to wrap itself up in a ball of string. Frankly, its going to need an all out charm offensive, most helpless sounding purrs at the ready.

Can we ever surpass sliced bread?

Got yourself the latest iphone? Or a Sky plus HD box? A 60" LCD TV to fit inside your 6x8 living room? Maybe even a super shiny sports car? No doubt you think all these things are pretty good and they are pretty good but there is something they're not as good as. Something a lot older but still more greatly revered than all of them. I'm talking of course, about sliced bread.

In an age where we can carry movies and hundreds of songs in our pockets, where all information is just a fingertip away on internet and companies are considering the possibilities of commercial space flights, the technological benchmark against all these things are set, is the ability to produce pre-sliced pieces of bread. The phrase still goes 'the best thing since sliced bread'. Sliced bread has existed for a number of years but clearly in the opinion of mankind nothing has come along that can match or even surpass its brilliance. Nobody says 'Wow, thats the best thing since Google.'

Perhaps we underestimate just what a big deal sliced bread was in its time. After doing some research (by research, I do mean googled) and it would seem sliced bread first went on sale in the USA in 1928. By 1928 a lot of things had been invented such as tanks, telephones, economic systems that made no sense and aeroplanes. Presumably, one of these must have been 'the best thing since...' but sliced bread surpassed them all. Consider that a moment, this is definitive proof that bread is better than an aeroplane. People were more in awe of being given pieces of bread already cut up for them than they were at the ability of a machine for aviation.

The question is, if mobile phones, the internet and space shuttles can't shift sliced bread as best invention ever, what can? Can anything? Has our species reached its technological peak? Maybe its not that bread is so great, maybe its the flaws in everything thats come since that has kept it in its place. As far as I know, a paedophile has never used a loaf of bread to contact a small child with.

Or maybe sliced bread just really is brilliant.