Why big tech companies want to disrupt your kitchen and make your oven talk to you

Would you like your oven to send you a text? Your extractor fan to have a life of its own? Your fridge to become something like a robot, able to talk and catalogue what it contains, sending that information to you while you're on your way home? That, at least, is the vision the companies who made your kitchen are pursuing. The smart home – long the preserve of early adopters who want to control their lightbulbs – is gradually growing up.