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When I was a kid (way back in the olden-days), so much new technology was entering our lives every week that everyone joked how, one day, jobs would involve nothing more than turning up to press a button then going home again.

Well guess what...

My job (as do the jobs of many others) involves just pressing buttons (on a keyboard).

Okay, perhaps it's not quite that simple - but it does show how quickly the joke of yesterday becomes the reality of tomorrow - thanks to advances in technology.

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And here's another: the solar-powered torch.

When solar cells became practical, everyone joked about how one day we'd have solar powered torches (the laugh being that they'd only work during the day when the sun was shining).

Now of course, we have solar-powered garden lights on sale all over the place. These things contain solar cells, batteries and efficient white LEDs that enable them to produce a small but useful amount of light for many hours after the sun goes down.

Now it appears that another big joke (the electric car) may also soon become a practical reality, thanks to a breakthrough in Lithium Ion batteries reportedly made by Toshiba.

The big problem with electric vehicles has been the rather poor performance of traditional battery technologies such as Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) and Lead Acid. All of these have a relatively low energy density, both by weight and volume.

Lithium Ion batteries have a vastly superior energy density to these older technologies and because of this they've radically changed the size and weight of many small portable electronic appliances. One only has to compare the size of battery in the original "beige brick" cellphones to that found in today's ultra-slim models to see how far we've come.

But Lithium Ion batteries have not been without their own problems. They have a limited lifetime (if you get two years you're doing very well) and they can't be fast-charged in the same way that other batteries can. Indeed, if you charge them incorrectly (too fast or too long) then they turn into rather effective incendiary devices.

What Toshiba claim to have done though, is dramatically reduce the time it takes to recharge these batteries, and also significantly extend their life.

At last there's the possibility that electric vehicles will have a range equivalent to their fossil-fueled cousins and might be recharged as quickly as you can fill the tank on your current car.

That only leaves the problems of sitting next to a sizeable chunk of a highly reactive compound that spontaneously ignites when exposed to air. I guess it will make for some very spectacular crashes though.

So, be careful what kind of April fools jokes you play today because today's joke is tomorrow's new technology.

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