The Age of Answers

In one of Isaac Asimov's short stories he describes a computer that learns and improves upon itself.  You could ask it almost any question and it would have an answer for you.  We're beginning to catch up with science fiction. We're building machines that will learn, that will mimic the human brain, that will dream.  Maybe not that last one.  But the world will begin to change once machines can give meaningful answers to complex questions and solve complex tasks.  Siri, do my taxes.  Siri, build an algorithm for me. Siri, compose a new song for me.  Those tasks may seem silly or awkward to ask of a computer, but talking to a computer at all seemed silly a few years ago.  We are doing everything we can to automate our world and our daily lives.  It's not impossible to believe that we could automate ourselves into irrelevance, and I'm not entirely sure that would be a bad thing.