Ours is a golden age of innovation

What a remarkable time we live in, brimming with new ideas for products, revolutionary applications of old ones, patents filed, investors found, prototypes made, revised and perfected to bring astonishing goods to the market - a regular smorgasbord of human ingenuity.

Just in my lifetime, the procession of redefined and totally new devices has run circles around centuries past.

I remember visiting a friend many years ago at a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he operated a computer used to analyze particle physics experiments. It was a behemoth, easily the size of an overzealous gardener's backyard shed.