My Granchin (grandad) used to cycle from Wool in Dorset to London to visit my Nana when they were courting. Very sweet!

I’m sure there have always been “lemmings” (and I count myself among them with my 50 mile round trip car commute every day), it’s just that the lemming-like activity changes with the technological age. I’m certain that my grandfather as a child could not have forseen what possible value a pure “information worker” such as myself might have in the numbers that we have them today. Sure, information was important in those days too, but the proportion of people who were solely involved in that domain was very small. I’m equally certain that my grandchildren will have jobs that seem unlikely by today’s values – perhaps once we crack some form of technology assisted telepathy we’ll need armies of ‘thought police’ to make sure that people don’t go about abusing other people’s cerebral rights, or maybe we’ll all be playing some massive multiplayer game by then and trading whatever virtual resources are on offer (not that different to the current money markets, right?).

I still think it’s about time someone invented a steam powered time (or teleportation) machine though – with mandatory brass cogs and lots of levers and pulleys.