Nothing thrills the true geek more than the phrase "prototype technologies", especially if they involve futuristic fusions of everyday objects and cutting edge programming.

That is what IBM is bringing to town next week when it presents - sadly, to a specially-invited audience of technology journalists only - six of what it calls its "most innovative products" from IBM's research and development divisions around the world. Ireland is the only stop for this gathering of ultra-cool toys - a glimpse of the kind of thing we all may think is the banal norm in 2010. Or even 2001.

Included in the "Tomorrow's Computing" geekfest is the office car, a souped-up and digitised Mercedes van that IBM touts as an office on wheels. The latest wireless PC technology gives a constant connection to the Internet, so that the busy executive - who one hopes is not also driving - can send faxes and receive e-mail while speeding down the N1. The wearable computer will make a return appearance to Ireland and other digital necessities of the future will also be on display.

IBM maintains a number of research laboratories in different countries whose employees mostly have the luxury, and the fun, of working in the future tense. Some of what they think could be possible and should be possible ends up in prototype items that might comprise IBM's product list of tomorrow.

Unfortunately the one item everyone has always wanted to see on that list still does not exist, although it was envisioned three decades ago. That, of course, is HAL, the devious talking computer of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL's name was chosen because it is a coded version of IBM - each letter in IBM became the previous one in the alphabet to form HAL.