Technology proceeds, like evolution, to the ‘adjacent possible’, a phrase coined by the evolutionary biologist Stuart Kauffman. It does not leap far into the future. I recently tried to think of examples of inventions that came long after their time, that should have been invented much sooner than they were – things we take for granted now and that would have been great for our grandparents to have had. It’s surprisingly hard to come up with them. I thought wheeled suitcases were a good example, recalling all those days when I lugged a heavy bag to a railway station in my youth.
