Yet, the supermaket goliath joined Microsoft on the stage here at PDC in LA this week, to unveil a prototype shopping application that the company hopes will be launched by the second half of next year.

Although not a solely Windows 7 touch application – it works with a mouse/keyboard and XP/Vista too – the software gives a glimpse into how touchscreen PCs could be used in places like the kitchen, where there’s not always space for a mouse and keyboard.

The software acts as a message board, a calendar, a picture pinboard – and of course a place to do your online shopping without even thinking about it. Recipe and meal suggestions constantly pop-up, with the option to add ingredients to your shopping basket, simply by dragging and dropping them from one side of the screen to the other.

It’s hard to get a feel from these screenshots, but the software contains lots of nice 3D touches, such as the option to spin around birthday cakes with the flick a finger to take a look at the decoration on the back, and even the lift the cake out of the box. The feature that got the PDC crowd most animated was the integrated barcode scanner, which means you can wave your empty milk carton in front of your webcam and it will automatically be added to your shopping basket.

Tesco’s head of R&D, Nick Lansley, told me that the company is working with university students to port the application to the iPhone. He’s also not ruling out the possibility of building it into dedicated hardware. “We’re prepared to look at a special Tesco appliance,” he said, although pre-installing it on the PCs that Tesco already sells is a more likely option.

Lansley insists the supermarket won’t use it to track users’ shopping habits (at least, not any more than it does so already with its Clubcard scheme). But Tesco is opening up the APIs, so that partners can build thier own promotional widgets into the software. It makes cutting coupons out of the newspaper look so last century…

 Two points. Number one: every man gets lonely but I don’t like my front door that much. Number two: it doesn’t bloody work. Most nights I stumble home from the pub only to stand before my house waving my hands like an orchestra conductor and weeping with vexation because the damn thing refuses to open. Even if it did work, it has no advantages over a key. It’s no smaller, no faster, and it’s not like keys have ever being particularly difficult to use. Except for Bayon, of course, for whom a key is like carrying around a surfboard.

But, here’s the worry. Once you start doubting the technology in your life, it becomes very difficult to stop.

You see after leaving my house this morning, the first thing I did was to plug in my headphones where they’ll probably remain for a majority of the day. I listen to music on the way to work, when I need to concentrate in work, when I go the gym, go on long journeys… You get the picture, and I suspect most people are the same. My MP3 player is great, but I do worry that we’re increasingly using our technology as an excuse to bundle ourselves up against the world, ears blocked with headphones, eyes blocked by laptops. When was the last time we looked at a stranger on the bus, let alone talked to them?

Then there’s Tesco, which has recently been invaded by the self-service machine. What an incredibly aggravating device this is. Instead of handing your sandwich over to a till person, you now swipe it yourself and bag it yourself, an action which is promptly followed by it telling you it doesn’t recognise what you’ve swiped and doesn’t believe it’s in the bag. I swear, using these things is about as much fun as rubbing your bum over sandpaper, and I’ve yet to use one without it locking up and calling a till person anyway. I’ve never gotten one of these things to work, and thanks to the sheer amount of hassle they cause, the queues they’re meant to reduce are now out of the door. Thank you for shopping with Tesco it chirps. No, no Tesco, thank you for completely wasting the last ten minutes of my life. 

Next up is an electronic swipe card to get into work, which I always lose, a lift which can’t count and will invariably skip whichever floor you’re on, and a possessed work computer which couldn’t be anymore evil if it hovered five feet off the desk and threw up on me every time I started it. There’s my phone which dials 999 every time I sit down, my laptop which makes a noise akin to nails down a chalkboard when I turn it on, and every single peice of software I use on a daily basis which invariably turns a five minute task into a fifteen minute chore.

In fact, as I bring this rant to a close just about the only piece of technological bobbins which makes my everyday a parade is the microwave. Two thirds of everything I eat has probably been irridiated by that baby, and I make no apologies for that because I hate cooking, don’t understand fine cuisine and have no truck with healthy food.