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Columnist Hugh Dixon reflects on our fascination with new technology – and ends up getting cold feet.

Are you an early adopter? One of those people who surfs the leading edge of technology, buying up every new gadget that comes onto the market only to discard it when the next one arrives? If so, read on.

(If not, read on anyway – you might be converted.)

Being first with the latest must-have gizmo isn’t anything new. Back in the fifth century AD, a canny but unknown Roman inventor came up with something we might well be familiar with today: the isundial.

It was stylish, with its gleaming face of burnished brass. It was practical, with an engraved cheat sheet to help users work out which way to point it.

And it was portable, designed to be held in just one hand while you

twiddled its dials to work out if you were late for your appointment with Gaius Maximus Secundus.

All right, it didn’t have GPS, or a rear-facing camera for taking selfies, or personalised ring-tones, or emojis, or any of those essential aids to communication that we take for granted these days.

But, most importantly of all, what it did have was exclusivity. Everyone had a stone sundial, dahling, but you had to be a pretty well-off Roman to own an isundial.

Once it gets going, of course, the human imagination does rather tend to run riot. And in many ways the 19th century was the golden age of invention.

Nonetheless, some of the century’s more arcane inventions never really got off the drawing board.

Take for instance the self-raising hat. What could be more useful or more practical? Imagine yourself for a moment to be a gentleman of the Belle Epoque, a flaneur, a man about town. You progress along the boulevards in all your glory, your hands occupied carrying your umbrella and your attaché case. From the tips of your highly polished shoes to your carefully pressed trousers to your smartly tailored frock coat to your glistening top hat, you are a most stylish young gentleman.

All of a sudden, a young lady of your acquaintance hoves into view. Etiquette must be adhered to, decorum must be preserved. But how will you greet Mademoiselle Fifi (for it is she) with both hands encumbered?

Fortunately you have planned for this very moment well in advance, and have imported from the USA your very own model of JC Boyle’s Saluting Device – a mechanical contraption that sits between the wearer’s immaculately coiffed hair and his unutterably stylish hat.

You tilt your head forward slightly and the mechanism springs into action. A system of wheels and levers elevates your hat a few centimetres, and Madame Fifi’s admiration knows no bounds.

In a somewhat more macabre vein, imagine that you are another 19th-century person (your gender is immaterial) and that through no fault of your own you have been pronounced dead.

The priest has administered the last rites, the doctor has shaken his head and signed the death certificate, your relatives have wailed and mourned (unless perhaps they have been expecting a small legacy) and your mortal remains have been safely and deeply interred.

You’re just getting used to your new state of non-being when a thought strikes you.

“Hang on a minute,” you say to yourself. “I’m not dead at all. I can wiggle my toes. And blink my eyes. And wasn’t that a rat I just heard scratching at my coffin?” To misquote a rather famous philosopher: you think, therefore you live.

Now is the time to be grateful that, before you purportedly passed away, you had the foresight to purchase an example of JG Kritchbaum’s Device

For Indicating Life In Buried Persons, and that your grieving friends have installed it in your grave.

The Device looks something like a shortened submarine periscope. The dear departed grasps a double handle, and on discovering that they’re not as departed as everyone thought they were, twists it back and forth.

At surface level, a glass dial rotates to indicate that the subterranean sleeper has awakened. The relatives rejoice (unless they were the ones expecting a legacy), and the doctor trembles at the thought of the malpractice suit that must surely follow.

Krichbaum patented his Device in 1882. It says so on the internet, so it must be true.

And speaking of the internet, let’s turn our attention for a moment to Nikola Tesla. This engineer, physicist and futurist was one of the greatest inventors of the early 20th century.

Serbian by birth, Tesla was particularly interested in electricity, and among other contributions to modern happiness developed X-ray machines, alternating current and, to the eternal gratitude of the young at heart, a radio-controlled boat.

He believed that electricity held the solution to most of mankind’s ills. So much so that he poured most of his money into a scheme that would enable communication across the entire planet: the 100-million volt ‘World System’.

This, Tesla hoped, would allow “the connection of all stock tickers of the world… a world system of musical distribution… the world distribution of typed or handwritten letters, cheques… a universal marine service enabling… ships to steer perfectly without compass… the world reproduction of pictures…”

In a quite extraordinary moment of foresight, Nikola Tesla had predicted online banking, itunes, email, satnav and Instagram – 100 years before the internet.

Никола Тесла онлайнбанкингті де, itunes, электронды поштаны да, спутниктік навигацияны да, «Инстаграмды» да көре білді. In a quite extraordinary moment of foresight, Nikola Tesla had predicted online banking, itunes, email, satnav and Instagram. В момент своего озарения Никола Тесла увидел и онлайнбанкинг, itunes, электронную почту, спутниковую навигацию, «Инстаграм».

Sadly though for early adopters who were hoping to impress their friends by being the first to own a World System tablet or hand-held, Tesla ran out of money and never got any of these ideas off the drawing board. He’s remembered today in the brand name of a highly desirable electric car, and of course the tesla is also the unit of measurement of magnetic fields. But you knew that, didn’t you?

Hard science is at the root of all cool inventions. But our final invention – perhaps discovery is a better description – is quite literally too cool.

Just a couple of months ago, the BBC reported that scientists at Washington

State University have created matter with negative mass. Which in layman’s terms means that if you take a chunk of the stuff, and drop it, it floats upwards. If you push it away from you, it accelerates towards you.

We’ll skip over the technical details

(says he, because he doesn’t understand them). But just think of the value to the makers of tableware, who will soon be marketing the undroppable (and hence unbreakable) iglass.

Just think of the benefits to air travellers, who will in the not too distant future be able to climb into a virtually weightless iplane and waft away to distant climes.

And just think… no, it’s no good. There’s always a downside to these new inventions, and with negative mass it’s the temperature. All this messing around with the laws of nature can only occur close to absolute zero: -273ºc.

The champagne in your iglass would freeze like a brick: the comfortable seat in your iplane would chill your bones beyond the help of JG Krichbaum’s iwaker-upper.

Enjoy the rest of your flight. And if you’re looking forward to buying some funky new piece of technology while on your travels, be very careful that you don’t drop it.