I don't make predictions, and I predict I never will. But wild suppositions are another matter.
One day, I suppose, the munificent legacy to humankind left by Dr Robert Adler will be appreciated in monument, public holiday or panegyric.
It is hard to believe that the anniversary this year of Dr Adler's most excellent invention has not been a more public celebration.
For Dr Adler, born on December 4, 1913, in Vienna, Austria, is responsible for the first halfway decent remote control.
And this year, 2009, is exactly 53 years since that momentous invention.
Not many people are aware the extent to which life would be unacceptable without the remote control.
Plastic, button-clad, and deeply sensual, the remote control has increased quality of life to an unimaginable degree.
Getting out of one's chair for any reason has long been at the top of the list of things that make humans desperately unhappy.
Dr Adler was born in Austria, earned his doctorate in physics at Vienna, then fled the Nazis, first travelling to England, then America.
His colleague, Eugene Polley, devised a remote control in the early 1950s that worked by sending a beam of light, but the design had problems.
If the television was in a sunny corner or a well-lit room it would change channels by itself.
Dr Adler used sound instead of light, replacing the light beam with high-frequency magnetostrictive oscillators that mechanically sounded an ultrasonic gong, which told the television what to do.
Better than any of the science involved was the name of his creation.
The Zenith Space Commander 400.
Roll that little baby around your tongue.
Dr Adler changed the world, but, ironically, rarely watched television.
News of the utmost importance, news that will vivify and delight, has just come in from the United States, that the BEST PROGRAMME EVER will have a seventh season.
Not only that, but Curb Your Enthusiasm, the creation of Seinfeld writer Larry David, will include a fictional reunion of that most excellent of shows.
Within the various layers of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where fact and fiction intertwine, the show, apparently, will feature a continuing plot thread that involves Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards all playing themselves as the network organises a Seinfeld reunion TV special.
Seinfeld had two levels of excellence.
When David was not involved it was great, when he was, it was sublime.
A combination of the two will be the best television event of the year.
It remains to be seen whether it is programmed for before 11pm.
