Attempts to predict the growth, success and uptake of technology are rife. Accurate predictions, less so. "There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home", said Ken Olsen, then founder and CEO of DEC in 1977. "I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers" is apocryphally attributed to Thomas Watson of IBM in 1943.

It's easy to say "well ... duh" with the benefit of hindsight in 2010 but consider this. The first generation of in-car GPS units appeared in 1996. If anyone had told you that 14 years later you'd be running something infinitely more sophisticated and customisable, more powerful than one of Olsen's DEC VAX computers that I started out on, on a device that you stuck in your pocket and which, by the way connected to a global network of computers and was also a telephone, you'd probably not have believed them or suggested that at a minimum they cut their coffee intake back.