In his valedictory speech after 23 years in the UK House of Commons, the Labour MP Chris Mullin pithily assessed the current era of consumerism, globalization and technological advance with the laconic observation that ‘I continue to doubt that there is a long term future for an economy based on shopping’. Indeed, it often appears that the end function of much-lauded technological innovation is merely to grease the wheels of consumer expenditure: recent years have elicited much comment on how Internet shopping transcends the stressful physicality of the high street, facilitating the sedentary nirvana of click-click-click-buy. Easy, you might think; but there are those whose business plans and entire future strategy depends on making it even easier. And much of this current thinking rests on one universal unchallengeable truth: there is nothing easier than sitting on the sofa and watching an episode of Friends.