Not according to General Electric, which this month called off a plan to build such a device. Other visions of the e-kitchen have also faded: Electrolux first showed off its own Screenfridge two years ago, but has yet to put the device on sale.

Some appliance-makers are still pressing ahead, however. LG Electronics is already selling an internet fridge in South Korea, while Whirpool in the US hopes to have a product by the end of the year. These devices have screens enabling the owner to dial into the internet from the kitchen, and rudimentary methods of keeping track of the food that is stored inside. Their successors may one day automatically order food over the internet when stocks are low.

The very idea of hooking kitchen appliances to the global information network smacks of the visionary hubris that has characterised the early internet age.

Is computer and communications technology advanced enough to produce mass-market products that are both useful and affordable? Do people really need or want such devices? And is there any way for the companies that make them or provide the services on which they depend to turn a profit?

These are the questions that have been left by the bursting of the dotcom bubble.

The internet, which was meant to change everyday life in profound ways, has had less immediate impact than its champions had predicted. The limitations exposed during this period will have to be overcome before a true digital consumer economy can be born.

Those limitations fall into three distinct areas: the state of the technology and communications infrastructure; the applications to which that infrastructure is being put; and the business models of the new companies that have arisen to exploit these ideas.

In terms of infrastructure, communications remains the biggest block. The high cost of connecting to the internet in many parts of the world, and the scarcity of residential high-speed connections everywhere, have limited the uses of the new medium.

Even countries with highly-developed communications networks, such as the US, have a long way to go. Despite the passage five years ago of legislation to deregulate the country's local telephone business, less than 7 per cent of US local telephone lines were being serviced by new competitive communications companies by the middle of last year. Only around 5 per cent of US households have broadband internet connections.

Broadband may not arrive fast enough to save the many dotcom companies whose business plans depend on it. Entrepreneurs such as Richard Frank, whose Food.com web site provides take-out services for restaurants, say the always-on nature of broadband networks will turn the internet into a true mass-market medium and stimulate demand for their services. Many such companies, however, simply do not have the cash to hold out in the hope of better times to come.

While the limitations of the communications infrastructure have restricted the potential for online commerce, the applications of that technology have in some cases also been found wanting.

Ideas for entirely new ways of handling everyday transactions over the internet have proved disappointing. Priceline, a company which has employed an online reverse-auction to let people bid for groceries or airline tickets, has had to retrench. Letsbuyit.com, a European site that aimed to let individuals group together to gain the benefits of buying in bulk, has filed for bankruptcy. New methods such as these have simply not provided the combination of convenience, value and certainty that comes from buying a product at a fixed price in the traditional way.

Some online retailers have fared better - although the potential demand may be smaller than many had hoped, to judge from disappointing growth recently in sales in the US, where "e-tailing" is most advanced.

The evidence from the latest Christmas shopping season suggests that online retailers will have trouble grabbing the 10 to 15 per cent of sales in some sectors which had appeared possible before, says Henry Blodget, internet analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York. Only certain products are well-suited to this form of buying , he adds - items such as CDs or books that do not need to be seen before they are purchased, and which are easy to ship.

"The opportunity is smaller than we thought two to three years ago," says Mr Blodget. That is a sobering thought for companies which had taken for granted an exponential growth in demand for their services.

Amidst this deflation of expectations, the commercial foundations of many internet companies have turned out to be distinctly wobbly. The thin profit margins that make traditional retailing such a tough business have carried over into the online world, exposing those companies that lack the merchandising skills needed to survive.

On top of that, online retailers have spent heavily on the technological infrastructure needed to guarantee that they can fulfil the orders they receive. Their gamble: that order volumes would jump fast enough to cover these high fixed costs. For companies such as eToys, the biggest pure online toy seller, those gambles have not worked out.

The current gloom surrounding the internet sector is likely to prove as exaggerated as the over-excitement that preceded it, however. The "S-curve" that affects the acceptance of any new technology - a period of relatively slow adoption is followed by a period of rapid growth in the mass market - suggests that the real boom is still to come, says Michael Parekh, an internet analyst at Goldman Sachs.

A handful of young companies, such as eBay, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!, have already proved that it is possible to create entirely new brands and global businesses online in record time.

"Five years ago, none of this existed," says Mr Blodget. "There are now some very big [internet] companies around with good long-term prospects." And maybe, one day, all fridges will order their own food over the internet.