With 60% of Americans using the voice-activated concierge service on their smartphone every day, people are growing accustomed to the idea of interacting with a virtual assistant. Tapping into the trend, Amazon has launched a smart speaker that acts like a home assistant.

With the news of Samsung spying through televisions, Ford bugging cars and yesterday’s internet wunderkinds – Google, Facebook, Amazon – feeling like today’s big corporates, internet critic Andrew Keen gives his views on potential digital dystopias in his book The Internet Is Not The Answer.

The number of people using messaging apps is set to hit two billion by 2018, so it’s no wonder brands want to get in on the action. Major tech players are touting chatbots as the next big thing, but can they really revolutionise online interactions, or are they just part of an industry-driven pipe dream?

Kids in Asia spend a lot of time glued to tablets, and it's suggested this could have negative effects on development. Now, a number of start-ups plan to bring children into the age of technology without separating them from the real world, reducing the time they spend looking at screens.