Just got home from a hard day's work? Why not heat up some leftovers, make a cup of coffee and - during those few idle seconds - punch a few buttons on the microwave door and get your bills paid.
Stephen Emmott, a computational neuroscientist who is the director of NCR's Knowledge Lab in London, believes smart-banking concepts, such as the microwave bank, are the way of the future. The concepts are designed to fit with everyday life. We spend a lot of time in our kitchens, so why not bring banking to them? The humble microwave can be transformed to take care of our banking, let us e-mail our friends or download recipes.
"Banking has for a long time not been as consumer-centric as consumers would like," explains Emmott. "We see the future of computing as an evolution from IT to what we have termed relationship technologies (RTs) and we are leading the creation of some of these."
His other concepts include relations tokens (a kind of smartcard in the form of a ring or watch) and wearable computing, a bid to make PCs as much of a fashion accessory as mobile phones or digital watches.