One day soon Siri will know exactly what you want and when

In an unjustly dark and dusty corner of YouTube is a badly compiled video slideshow of Alan Rickman in various stages of monochrome moodiness. It has the look of something slapped together late one night by a distracted student who should have been revising and YouTube is hardly the most salubrious home for Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. But Rickman's reading is heavenly – he oozes through it: I found it by following some piece of internet flotsam or other – one of those things you end up doing online when you're almost certainly on deadline. But it came to mind again when the female voice of Siri – the voice control feature on Apple's more recent iPhones – was tracked down recently in the US. It's a woman called Susan Bennett, who has variously voiced a cash machine, phone systems and help messages for Delta Airlines.