The point of machines is to diminish human effort required for a goal.  At one time, that ment a stick to provide some leverage, or a pointy endge to fell a beast.  Now our tools had become so advanced that they interperted our motions and actively sought to acomplish our goals.  The coffee machine had inched itself closer to the filters every day for a month, fitting ever more gracefully into Ted's morning routine, until eventually the filter step disappeared entierly.  Ted never really even noticed it was happening, but the motion he had used to fetch the filter was eventually reduced to nothing.  And so it went with all the actions Ted needed to make coffee in the morning, until he could complete them all by simply signaling his desire for coffee to the right sensor.