Is live comedy joining the automation revolution?

If you've engaged in any kind of outside-the-house activity over the last few years, you'll know that automation is increasingly apparent. Walk into a fast food restaurant and you can now order your meal on a huge device that looks like Greg Davies or Richard Osman left their mobile phone lying around. Go supermarket shopping, or pick up film tickets, or turn up at the doctors, and you'll often be met by a machine. You can even donate at certain charity shops via a tablet-like device now. It's a different world.

Live comedy, though? That may take a bit longer for the automation revolution to really kick in. No doubt there are theatres where you can pick up stand-up tickets online, but generally speaking, comedy people are a bit more hands-on. Yes, today's comics may get in the zone before gigs by visiting a virtual casino, as modern punters can play funny real money slots for free online, but you can't imagine old-school stand-ups booking their club slots via some new-fangled device. That sort of admin happens in the pub.

Interactions between performers and fans have always been more face-to-face in comedy than anywhere else. Where musicians tend to have a mate manning their merch stands after gigs, comedians will usually head straight there after strolling offstage, to personally sign copies of their autobiography (after you've shelled out a tenner for it; although a quick browse online would show you that it's now 0.01p on Amazon).

Indeed, that comic may have initially enticed you along to their gig by physically handing you a flyer outside (at least they didn't charge you for that one). This industry is interactive in the old sense of the word. At a competitive festival, it's very common for a comedian to flyer you before their gig, then chat to you from the stage during it, then stand at the back with a donation bucket or the aforementioned table of books and DVDs afterwards. Hey, if you look half-decent they might even come back to your house.

Of course, you can book tickets for most gigs online these days, and comedians are actively updating the donation bit at the end too, standing there with a card machine for anyone who's come along with no notes or coins, in our increasingly cashless society. Although at one Edinburgh show last year the act explained that - due to dodgy wifi - the card machine would be upstairs after the gig, while regular donations would be downstairs. Which made it a bit too easy to sneak past them both, in truth.

Post- millennial comedians have been utilising tech to get their gags across for a while, of course, from Powerpoint presentations to podcasts, social media to YouTube sketches. Actually, speaking of live shows, you'll also often see comics asking for gig slots on Twitter, Facebook and the like, which presumably works pretty well if enough industry types follow them.

Meanwhile your theatre-filling comics will probably find a way to just send a hologram to the show, eventually, rather than physically turning up. That's if they can work out how to get it to sign the books afterwards.