The most famous of Arthur C Clarke's Three Laws of Prediction is the last one: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Most often the law makes for good entertainment. A knight is handed a Wii controller to thwart an armoured Mii or a Chaucerian peasant prods perplexed at a plasma screen to reach a frothing brew.
The amusement that follows is used to show that, gosh, aren't we just the cleverest.
Of course, we are the self-same clots that will be similarly humiliated by the inheritors of our legacy but that fits in less comfortably with our smug narrative.
The Mayans - who will be all over your internet for the next 12 months - were such an advanced civilisation that they developed a written language, figured out zero and studied the stars with such insight that they calculated a length for a year (365.24 days) that we still use today.
Such was the accuracy of their calculations that they could "predict" the celestial cycles right up to, well, at least 2012. The momentous planetary alignment that occurs on December 21 was foreseen 5,000 years ago.
Because many wrongly assume that history is synonymous with stupidity, the inference is that they must have been (a) aided by aliens or (b) divine.
The miscued logic follows that December 21, 2012, is therefore a Big Day - end of the world, second coming, new age of enlightenment etc.
Perhaps Clarke needs an update: Any ahead-of-its-time technology is indistinguishable from magic (for those who run star-speckled websites with yellow type).
Chips with everything
A family Christmas entailed not only a visit to Alvin And The Chipmunks 3: Chipwrecked at the cinema but, afterwards, the original Alvin And The Chipmunks on DVD (many times, often consecutively).
Now, despite myself, I'm curious about No.2 - the Squeakquel. Where did the Chipettes come from? What was the genesis of Simon's existential crisis? How did evil Ian fall so low? Aaargh.
