Has the world gone mad?

Throughout history the world's cleverest people have been mocked for their revolutionary ideas. Galileo was bullied at school for going on about the world being round and Einstein had a relatively torrid time just for having crazy hair. It seems that visionaries are there to be mocked and derided, but rarely listened to.

Well here at Null Hypothesis we generally like to go against the flow and cut loose from the norm, however, on this occasion we're joining the massed ranks. Ryoo Pill-gye from Korea is a modern day techno-prophet and he is clearly bonkers. He believes that his predictions for up and coming, cutting edge technologies will not only revolutionise daily life, but will also maintain his country's position as a global leader in an increasingly high-tech world.

He claims that the Internet will carry scent by 2015; using binary code that can be translated by a special cartridge incorporated into the recipient's computer. Very high-tech yes, but quite why you would need this is somewhat of a mystery.

Mr. Pill-gye has also claimed that by 2012 your mobile phone will last for two months on a single charge but he fails to allude to whether my text messages are still going to go missing. On the medical front we will have robots performing operations by 2018 and as if that wasn't scary enough, there is the prospect of having nano-robots whizzing through our veins searching out the problems before they even start.

There are even plans for a digital military uniform that will be enhancing the physical power of soldiers by 2015; now call me sceptical, but aren't we wandering into the realms of comic books super heroes now?

A world without the wheel or penicillin or the telephone is now unthinkable and Western civilisation is now almost entirely dependent on the computer. However, if Korea is seeking world domination of the techno-market, I fear they may require more enduring products than sweet-smelling emailing and long-lasting batteries.