While a cyborg butler is still many moons away, the Boston Globe has a crazy article up about a tech support worker named Chad Barraford who has created his own Jarvis program.

The program — which according to the article, is based on Robert Downey Jr.’s persnickety online program in the 2008 Iron Man film — actually can talk, as well as adjust lighting and temperature in this guy’s apartment.

Compared with much of what’s marketed as “smart home’’ technology, Jarvis is both a marvel and a bargain. He runs on a 4-year-old Mac Mini computer with built-in speech recognition — and virtually no additional bells and whistles. Barraford has calculated, down to the penny, how much he has spent on a DLA that does everything but brush his teeth. To date, the figure stands at $691.98. That includes wall speakers and an xTag wireless microphone.

And it keeps up to date information on the guy’s Facebook and Netflix accounts. It almost makes the multibillion-dollar armored warsuit seem like a bit of an afterthought, doesn’t it?

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