ON a weekend away, I saw what has got to be the working model of Clark's third law - a robot milker. Clark's third law? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

And it was magic, given that I can remember hand-milking as the norm.

Magic, too, was the way that even the elderly ladies in the herd had rapidly taken to wearing the collars fitted with the gubbins to tell the robot who they were, fitting themselves into the stall, and tucking into the feed the robot measured out for their personal feeding plan. And all this while the robot clunked across, cleaned them up, fitted the cups on, milked them and cleaned itself up afterwards.

Simultaneously, it was recording what was going on, the yield and the time between milkings, as well as flagging up any problems which would merit a check, all organised into computer displays.

In the face of all this magic, I stuck to the principle that onlookers should keep their hands in their pockets, but I'm sure it'd have come up with a fully-orchestrated version of Beethoven's Pastoral if I'd hit the right button.

It was something of a relief to learn that, if it goes wrong, the robot has to ring a human being to round up some help. The robots haven't quite taken over - yet.

They aren't planning to march in and claim victory, however, they are just going to sneak away our mental skills until we are totally dependent on them. It's starting already.

I no longer know any phone numbers by heart except the few I already had in my head as the millennium turned and we got a phone with a keyboard and database. Key in a name, press the button and it dials the number for you, no need to remember, or look up, a string of 11 figures, no risk of a misdial. If we go away, we download all the current numbers into a wallet-sized gizmo and take it with us. I am ashamed to admit that I couldn't tell you, off the top of my head, the offspring's home phone number.

Mobile phones haven't helped, with their mini-memories, never mind their own, totally unmemorisable, 11 digits. I can recognise the family mobile numbers if presented with them but I can't memorise any of them, not even my own.

Good job pin numbers have only four digits as I've got six of the things. All I have to do is remember which belongs to what, and that'll become a more regular exercise as shops go on to the "chip and pin" system instead of asking us to sign receipts for card transactions.

In future, however, we may not even have to do that. It's on the cards - though not yet on the plastic sort - that ID information will be incorporated into the chip and do away with pin numbers.

One of these days, I just know I'll put next door's burglar alarm number into a cash machine and wonder why it snaffles my card.

I'm fighting back, starting with learning the offspring's home number, though it'll be a waste of time. She'll be out