An unusual quiz: you are asked a set of questions which are largely hypothetical but, nevertheless, interesting. The questions are (as far as I remember) as follows: would you chose to be (a) invisible (b) be able to predict the future (c) be able to read a person’s mind but only briefly (d) be happy in love (e) be rich (f) be famous (g) live a long life, and (h) be very attractive. There are some others but I forget them.

Let us consider which of these is achievable by some future electrical or electronic invention. Invisible: it would be easily possible to devise a ‘cloak of invisibility’. All that has to happen is to project the scene behind a person for that person to effectively become invisible. By example, let us say I am standing in front of a garden. Then, if we cause my cloak to project the garden, I will be effectively invisible. It sounds awkward, but it could be refined to work well once the basic principle is developed. Naturally, you will have to breathe, so your presence may be suspected. Another option would be to distort the visual pattern of your body by means of a high- voltage electric field. Probably achievable, but dangerous.

To predict the future exactly is impossible. However, if we accept that the future is not carved in stone but there are many options, based on the present, it will be quite simple to have a data collection system that will predict the possible future with some accuracy.

Naturally, some futures are impossible to predict, for example, what substance my dog, Tommy, will roll in next and where in the house he will deposit it.

I have carefully made no reference to predicting the way some ladies think, which itself is unpredictable. Reading minds will require that we can capture and interpret brain waves. This is not as much a challenge as we think – often, in any group, people have simultaneous thoughts.

Being happy in love is really very simple. I remember, in 1992, I was in an apartment in Maputo, Mozambique. Below, a person was fixing cars and revving engines. Above, a person was pounding mealies eight hours a day. I was in bed with a woman I loved very much and was very happy. Nothing else mattered. This is a human thing but it should be possible to install a feedback device in the brain that generates loving feelings with an injection of a chemical such as serotonin or dopamine. A proximity detector could be coupled to this, which would link to a similar set-up on anybody you may want to fall in love with and . . . bing! (If this sounds awkward, trust me, it is probably a more workable system than finding a partner in Cape Town, which, by my experience, is like finding intelligent life on the moon that is fluent in all of German, Xhosa and Mandarin).

I cannot think of any system which makes one very rich, but I think there is one in place – every time you phone a bank or similar institution, there is always a standard spiel where they tell you that they are a licensed financial provider (pause) and all calls are recorded (pause) and so on. I think those pauses are deliberate and the call income from them is split between the bank (which creates the pauses) and the service provider (which collects the revenue) and you do all the paying without being able to do a thing about it.

To live a long life, all you have to do is to consider acoustics legend Leo Beranek. He snow-skiied every year until he was 85. He did not smoke and drank moderately. Go Figure!

Very attractive? Plastic surgery, no problem.

To be famous is not hard. No machine required. Just invent all the above.