I think blade runner style emanators or Iron Man Jarvis is what you are looking at. Sure they won't help you do work, but they will do other things for you. You can call people, order things, watch movies, do other myriad other social networking stuff(Watch videos, see pictures).

For programmers of course its hard to work with those interfaces. But imagine a carpenter being able to order coffee, without having to deal with a screen.

That's the kind of utility we are talking about.