I cracked open the fortune cookie and read the little slip of paper on the inside. Immediately I realized that it had been written by a weather forecaster.

"You will be approached in the late afternoon by a pink polka-dot octopus..."

It continued on the other side: "... and asked to provide details of your application for a yellow cloud mulching permit."

Two things struck me about this particular fortune. The first is that they have come a long way in their ability to predict exactly what will happen and when, just like weather forecasters. This is undoubtedly due to recent technological developments. Laser technology, for example. Nano technology. Robotics. Bioengineering. And so many other specialized fields have been developed to points of precision unimagined just a generation ago.

And it's not just the weather forecasters.

In London, Ontario, specialists are performing microscopic cardiac surgery on patients miles away using a robot named CSTAR (Can't you just wait for new parents to start naming their children after the famous surgeon, CSTAR?). This has opened up the door to many benefits, such as sending robots to remote locations without having to worry about a surgeon replacing the wrong organs due to jet lag.

But the real benefit was revealed when one surgeon confided in me: "You know the world is a better place when we don't have to scrub our hands before surgery anymore."

I can call anybody in North America on the telephone and they will answer in real time. Not only is this a better response than I can give people face-to-face, but the telephone cables direct my call to the exact person I want, saving the other 400 million telephone subscribers the inconvenience of having to say, "Wrong number...again!" Just a few decades ago, Switchboard Suzie was manually connecting everybody.

"Janice Land? No problem. I'll connect you." CLICK.

"No, wait. I wanted to speak to Janet Lam. Hello?"

My father can pinpoint the exact amount of blood sugar he packs in his veins. Not very long ago, people could not care less how much sugar was in their blood, as long as they had plenty of it