Every technology is intermediate: whatever it is we're using right now has replaced whatever it was before and itself faces eventual obsolescence from an upstart technology. This is the chugging rhythm of life; hardly anything is steady state, there's always something nipping at the heels of the current flavour of the month.

Granted there are abiding technologies - the wheel or screw threads for instance, which you could argue are timeless, but have n't we made them slowly more efficient over time, wheels that adhere better to surfaces comes to mind, and is n't that in itself a change ?

I overheard someone on the trip home from Birmingham this evening telling someone that "...the best ideas come after a couple of pints..." Maybe. Mine invariably surface stealthily during the long hours of a meeting. Weary, bored, distracted. Give me no better ingredients for tangential thinking than these. They never fail; time after time, these three stride out of nowhere, a sly introduction ("Hi, we're here"), and that's it: I'm thinking of something else, daydreaming.

So this is the crucible for my ideas really: these three moods, a warm meeting room, powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide flashing across a screen, the drone of voices. I can ideas without recourse to beer.

It all fused perfectly this afternoon and I ended up musing over the changes in office technology or more precisely what people use in meetings. Years ago, notebook and pen, primitive but efficient, and of course very reliable, no upgrades, no software conflicts, no batteries to run out; then, came laptops, a few to begin with, then with a roar and a rush, everywhere. Laptops popped open like mini individual lecterns on every meeting room or conference room table.

Today I think I spotted a technology shift, fewer laptops, more blackberries and their ilk strewn across the meeting room table. A turning point? Are laptops now intermediate?