With the wardrobe light I'd prefer something simple like a relay that closes the circuit when the door is closed. Invert that signal with a transistor and buddabing buddaboom. Seems like more can go wrong once you start adding programming and iPhone apps and all this sort of stuff.
Whenever I book a flight google offers to set alarms and gives me don't forget your flight tomorrow notifications. They are obviously reading the email to achieve this.
When I was a kid my family used to say "you can't trust anything the media says". Now as an adult they all seem to have forgotten this and think I'm odd for my skepticism.
There is no democratic solution to this. It doesn't matter if you vote labor, conservative, democrats, republicans, greens. Democracy is no longer for, of, or by the people. Unfortunately the solution probably involves a spiral to the point that people are really suffering, followed by a violent revolution. However given the fragmented state of our societies perhaps a violent revolution would be easily divided by the powers that be into ethnic or whatever groups. Divide and conquer has worked so far in destroying our democracies.
When I was a kid a crow got it's head stuck in our gate. I ran and got my dad who got it free. For the next ten years the crows would attack magpies whenever they tried to swoop me in our street.
You're only addressing a few variables in a complex equation here. One of the big problems is the economic model that demands constant growth. A part of the problem with this model is that it requires constant population growth, especially to support the retirement of the baby boomers. This population growth comes at a cost to the proletariat. More competition for jobs means downward pressure on wage growth. More consumers means upwards pressure on cost of living. This creates a general movement of wealth in an upward direction. Sure the whole economy would collapse if we tried to move off this model, but perhaps this is what needs to happen. It's an unhealthy unsustainable model anyway.
Another issue is that employees jump around companies these days making companies less likely to invest in employees. People used to be lifetime employees and thus companies were more willing to invest in them with training and education.