I think it's already annoying that my fiancee's car decides to lecture us with an irritating beeping sound whenever the passenger needs to unbuckle for more than a few seconds. If you like that, you'll be thrilled to know that 'progressive' inventors around the world are busy thinking of more ways to coerce you into behaving as they think you should.

It may look like an ordinary rubbish bin, but don't let that fool you. Throw an aluminum can in here and you'd be none the wiser, but try chucking a plastic bottle away, and with an angry buzz it will throw it back out at you, fans whirring to rid itself of the wrong kind of rubbish.

We already have problems trying to encourage people to throw their junk into the trash, rather than littering. This kind of response from a trash can (one of several in a row — you'll have to figure out which to use for each type of material, no doubt) certainly won't help.

You know what's really telling, here? The inventors ponder a world where trash bins would already be able to detect which "type" of recyclable material each bit is. And what's their first thought, in response to that possibility? That the trash can (or another machine, later) could automatically sort and route it to the proper compartment? Oh, no: their first thought is that the trash can could use that knowledge to heave the trash back onto the user or sidewalk, embarrassing (and possibly splattering) some well-meaning human being who didn't quite recycle 'correctly' enough.

This is the 'smart trash can', part of the 'Toward the Sentient City' exhibition in New York, which explores how our lives might change when we can embed computers in anything and everything.

They don't know what "sentient" means, do they?

This fussy recycling bin is the invention of David Jimison and JooYoun Paek, who also created a street sign that points at passersby, and a park bench which tips people off if they've been sitting on it for too long.

David and JooYoun say they want to explore what might happen if technology went wrong in the city of the future, and make us think about our attitudes today.

"It raised concerns about safety - people mentioned 'my grandmother would be hurt if she was dumped off a bench', and it also raised concerns about the homeless", says David.

Oh, only the grandmothers and homeless, eh? It sounds like their moral framework is: Dumping a employed person off a park bench? Good! Get to work you lazy person! Sitting is not for you! Go out and earn us some more tax dollars! Dumping a homeless person off a park bench? Oh no! What have we done! You poor person you! You need to sit and relax some more!

And what's the value in exploring what happens when technology "goes wrong"? (Or is that just an ad hoc explanation for a poorly-thought-through idea?) If they really wanted to explore what happens when technology goes wrong the possibilities are endless: fire hydrants which pump kerosene, car washes which use sulfuric acid, active subway turnstyles which are sharped to dismember users. (Monty Python has a few suggestions, also.)

But, again, what's the point of that? Any idiot can think of a billion devices which don't or won't work well. (A clock which shows random numbers! A television which shows nothing at all!) A challenge would be to think of improvements, not malfunctions.

'Amphibious Architecture' is the brainchild of a team at New York and Columbia universities who floated sensors and lights in two of the city's rivers, so that just by sending a text message, people can find out what's living down there and what the water quality is like.

Can the fish now also text back: "We're fine, but really annoyed by this plastic floating trash above us which keeps shining beams of lights into our eyes at night while we're trying to get some rest!"?

'Natural Fuse' by Usman Haque, a London-based architect, who created a network of houseplants attached to the electrical system, which monitor energy use - if the system's members use too much power, some of the plants are killed, but if they collectively reduce their energy use the plants thrive, increasing their ability to capture carbon, and the energy available to all.

This also makes tons of sense: if a family uses "too much" energy (thus a bureaucrat in the background is implied, deciding how much energy each is allowed, 'according to their needs'), we should kill some plants to compensate — thus reducing the amount of carbon which will be captured!

Can our new would-be masters think their way out of a paper bag too?