Things they should invent

I often notice that we are, in fact, living in the future. (I can talk instantly to someone on the other side of the world! I can fit 10,000 songs into something the size of a fag packet!) But they seem to be being a bit laggardly in inventing certain clearly essential items. Here's my handy list for the boffins to consider, next time they get a moment or two of downtime.

1) Electronic books. Like the iPod, for books. Only you can't call it the iBook, because there's already a thing called that, and it's not this. Think how incredibly handy it would be to just be able to take one wee iPod type thing on holiday, with dozens of books on. Instead of nearly filling your rucksack with reading matter, still running out within the month, and then having to resignedly bookswap for Dan Brown and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (again).

2) Teleporters. Self-explanatory surely.

3) The anti-microwave. To cool things down quickly when they're too hot.

4) Vaguely remembered music recognition. When you've got a song stuck in your head - or something sounds a bit like something - it would identify the song for you. Yes, I know there's something already that can identify songs. I mean, my VRMR unit would work out the song you mean from you humming it very badly or confusedly mentioning facts which may or may not be about that song. Even when what you're singing sounds nothing like the target song or you can only remember that it goes, 'la la, something about a woman...I think...'.

5) A red button like you want it to be. Similar to the above. It would include vaguely remembered actor recognition, so you could be watching the telly and press it and it will tell you what advert the actor in question used to be in, when you last had that product and who it was you used to know at uni who claimed to have snogged the actor's son on holiday. And tell you where the backdrop in news items is, including exactly where the journalist is standing when they are in a city you know. And even more esoteric stuff like how the fuck they got a release form from that person and why in god's name did anyone commission this shit. You know, all the important questions you want answered when watching the telly.

6) In fact, all-pervasive general memory adjunct software would be very useful. When I say 'all-pervasive' I mean wherever you were, whatever you were doing, you could call on it. Walking down the street - what shop used to be next to that pub? Getting dressed in the morning - where did I last see my green shirt? Random conversation - who was the woman who did that thing, y'know, the thingy thing, with the thing like that [vague hand gesture]?. This, of course, would be much like actual memory is supposed to work - but with a better search facility. Although we might spend so much time happily browsing the infinitude of things we've forgotten that we never got anything done. A bit like the internet. Well, actually, a lot like the internet.