As one waves goodbye to the annual skiing chairlift in anticipation of the perenniel Stannah Stairlift, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that technological progress lacks the trailblazing quality it once had.

Science had bigger enemies when I was young: bugs to kill with DDT, homelessness to defeat with asbestos, and overpopulation to eradicate with The Pill. When the Eagle comic’s Pilot of the Future Dan Dare took to the skies, it was to smash the evil power of The Mekon rather than launch satellites so that young people could ask each other where they were.

This may seem to some like the curmudgeonly whingeing of an old bloke, but I’m confident that it isn’t. To me, it’s more a question of nobility having been ousted by inability. That is to say, the risk of exploration has been replaced with a doomed attempt to eradicate risk. The quest to face the future has become an unwillingness to face reality: where there was actual there is virtual; where there were real gains there are pretend games.

This was brought home to me today when I became aware of the stunning new Microsoft breakthrough: a movement sensitive thingummy called Ginetiket or Kinetitet or something. It’s USP (if I understand the press release correctly) is that it can sense the presence of somebody playing a computer game, and thus make the experience of zapping Xoggon invaders ‘more engaging’.

Is that it then? Is this what the ascent from the primordial swamp has been for – a multimillion-dollar investment in escapism?

Think for a minute or two about some of our recent scientific achievements as a species.

We have economics and finance so advanced, everything that occurs as a result is a surprise, or unexpected.

Medicine so advanced that every day a new thing deemed bad for us is debated – today, it was taking a shower – and every year a new way to live longer is discovered…on a planet where human longevity is a major problem.

Genetics so advanced we can now reproduce ourselves….on a planet where the main problem is too much reproduction.

And internet search engines so sensitive, typing in ‘top ten news sites in Australia’ achieves a first result ‘ten ways to make your penis bigger’.

I have an insight to offer about this. I think the problem is that science today serves not humanity, but business. It looks for better profits for shareholders rather than a better quality of life. It tries to enhance our appearance rather than enrich our knowledge. And above all, it strives to achieve better returns on investment, when what we should be looking for is real progress via investigation.

The future of Homo sapiens lies in interrogating the real…..even if it eventually proves that nothing is real. There is no future in feeding a perverse desire to retreat into the unreal.