How to get your husband to do the vacuuming

This column nearly didn’t happen. Just as I sat down to write, disaster! My dishwasher lost its connection to the internet. This meant I could no longer view real-time feedback about its water consumption on the app. Nor could I start my dishwasher remotely from my office, timing it perfectly so it would be ending the drying cycle when I got home. This facility is, of course, almost entirely pointless. I use it all the time.

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Thus I was nearly resigned to cancelling this column in order to spend the next six hours fixing the problem. Fortunately, resetting the router fixed the glitch straight away, which is why you are reading this now.

I am obsessed with this nonsense. I recently spent half an hour ‘upgrading the firmware’ on my lavatory. Yet this world of connected devices (aka ‘the internet of things’) exposes us to many vulnerabilities. It’s not just the firmware or software, however: the component most vulnerable to exploitation is the Y chromosome. Men need to be on their guard against an irrational yet persistent belief that our manhood is enhanced by displays of technological prowess. Why?

The Acheulean Period of human development lasted from 1.5 million to 110,000 years ago, encompassing both homo erectus and early homo sapiens. The most distinctive archaeological feature of this era is the profusion of hand-axes, the stone heads of which have a symmetry and elegance which far surpass any practical function. This finding has given rise to the ‘sexy hand-axe’ theory in evolutionary psychology (Kohn and Mithen, 1999), proposing that elegant hand-axes, worn on the male waist, had become a status-signalling device in sexual selection.