Dr Brain regularly hangs out with the geeks on Friday afternoons, ignoring phones, watching Bart Simpson, and talking about that next big thing. The geeks were picturing their silver dream machines. A couple of terabytes worth of hard disk, enough RAM to run Linux and Windows concurrently – coding in one OS and gaming in the other, with hot-key swapping between the two. Built-in digital surround sound, force-feedback full-body games controller, virtual reality headset, and a 2 400 by 1 800 flat plasma display…

But you`ll still be using your word processor, Dr Brain reminded them. You`ll still be e-mailing people more often than you should, printing more than is necessary, and creating newer and better and bigger and buggier applications.

Worst of all, the techies will still be playing god, with sole control over where and how you plug into “their” network, and which available address they`ll allow you to use.