This method works best if the wife is intelligent and adventurous. It may help if she has a sense of style, too. Select a wife with a PhD in instructional technology (computers and audio-visual equipment and methods). Such a wife may feel an obligation to learn all new and emerging methods and machines.)
Start by noticing that Amazon and Netflix download movies for very little but you need a tv with a good internet connection. So, better get a new tv. Not too big and not unnecessarily expensive. Spend some time looking in several different stores in her company. Buy and install.
Ok, the new one needs its own remote control, yet the one for the cable is still needed. Throw in one for the DVD player and one for the special devoted download connection. Now, you have four remotes where there was essentially one before.
Now, notice that all the computers you and she use are well out-of-date as far as speed and the latest operating system is concerned. Propose a conference with a sharp young man to support your contention that everybody who is anybody is way ahead and your household is truly out of step. Get new computers. Try to do so while operating the new tv arrangement is still a challenge.
Meanwhile, have your cell phone company get swallowed up by competitors so that it is no longer an option. Get new phones during several months of confusion and inoperable phones. In the midst of the confusion, go away for more than a month, preferably to a place with little or no phone service. Try to encourage all calls on calling cards, the ones with 10 digit numbers to get a line and 16 digits to authorize the call before the 10 digits for your neighbor across the street.
In some cases, you wil have now reached the detonation point. You will know you have reached it when there is a sudden burst of outrage and fatigue and shouts against the modern world and the fun of new electronics. If not, proceed to switch cell phone companies yet again, altering all numbers and procedures. Use a new arrangement with complex sign-on and registration steps.
It may be possible to find at this point that your own new computer needs to go to the shop for 2 to FOUR weeks. If so, request that you share her new machine, assuring her you will be not be any bother at all and will just quietly slip in and use it during the times she isn't. That way, you can look in on her every few minutes to see if she happens to be finished with her machine for a moment. With each peek, assure her that what you want to do on her machine can wait and that you are in no hurry at all.
Try to do all this right when she gets cataract surgery so that seeing anything, especially detail and small print, is frustrating.
If detonation has not occurred, it will at any time. Be prepared.
[The copy editor points out that getting a newer model of her Kindle with no warning, one with new capabilities and controls, AND, without telling her, throwing in an Apple iPad2 (additional operating system!) with a pink cover and her name engraved on it may help in pushing her over the top.]
