It occurred to me on the escalator in Marks & Sparks, so I could buy a tie (predominantly for an interview, but also I could tie it around my head, set fire to a car and be racist, as young people do): people have invented a lot of machines just to avoid doing anything.

Well, perhaps that isn’t the aim of the inventors of our century: maybe the large amount of work that the inventor displays creates his livelihood and he is merely providing services that can make accommodating our busier lives easier (traditional capitalism). Or maybe whoever invented escalators had been captured by oppressors who threatened to feed his family to the crocodiles if he didn’t invent the stairway from Harry Potter before midnight, with only coffee and a microwave lasagne to sustain him (traditional villainy). Either way, I was going upstairs without having to do something that I would say I’m great at and comes fairly naturally to me.

We have cars that drive themselves, music software that decides what music you like, video games that enable you to play sports against the professionals, despite hating exercise and having the reaction speed of yoghurt, blenders can chew food for us, self service checkouts mean we can experience irritating, slow service all on our own and there are razor blades that wee moisturiser on your face as you shave, so you don’t have to.

I remember in 1899 (don’t I look young?), the age that nearly had tractors, clean surgery and smelly bubble bath (often used in the same operation), the head of the US patent office Charles H. Duell stated that everything that could be invented had been. He was probably quite relieved that he was wrong, as he would have been out of a job otherwise.

Technology has been in the news again recently, and by that I mean the stuff that really matters: Manchester United winning the Carling Cup, a brief stop on their way to quintuple glory (a bit like Goliath journeying to thrash the Israelites, stopping at Little Chef to snack on children and have a wee). Ben Foster, the Man United keeper, used an iPod to watch how Tottenham players normally take penalties in the interval, possibly resulting in him being able to save O’Hara’s strike (or maybe it was saved because it was a rubbish spot kick, and I know one when I see one: I’m part English, part Dutch).

So where will it stop? If we have iPomputernet thingies that help play sport, what’s the point of it all, scream the runners up, to no-one listening? Personally I’m quite excited to see what else will spring up, especially as with oil running low, we may have to start inventing necessary stuff too.

It doesn’t matter so much. What does is that I’m going to try and get a www.cap-cleaner.com for my birthday.