Popcorn by Hot Butter. I spent forty years not knowing what that piece of music was. For years I had imagined that it was something from the BBC Radiophonics workshop output in the 1970s because Radio 4 used it as a theme tune for a programme. Then about ten years ago, I was driving along listening to an Internet station on my phone and they played that piece and I stopped the car to see what it was. The title could not be allowed to escape

Perhaps, one day, no-one will have to remember a tune for forty years before discovering its title. Perhaps one day there will be a neuro-Google; a device no bigger than a bluetooth earpiece that can pick up the electronic pulses generated by a person’s thoughts and translate those pulses into a language with which to search the Internet and find answers.

It would have found Popcorn for me and would be be able to find for me a piece of music that has eluded me for decades.  There is about it a silkiness and an Arabian feeling, but the name or the composer remain unknown.  It is currently used as the backing track for a Fox’s biscuit advertisement on television in England.

Try typing the terms into a search engine and it leads nowhere; neuro-Google would be able to take the tune from inside the head and find it out there, wherever it is, and whatever its origins may be.

Neuro-Google would not only act as a receiver from the brain, it would be able to transmit signals back. Those moments when one is lost for words, or when one says the wrong thing, would become a thing of the past. It would act as a dictionary and thesaurus, enabling one to articulate one’s sentiments with charm and style. It might even fulfil the role of the Babel fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy providing simultaneous translation of speech heard and enabling one to speak in whatever language was necessary.

The only disadvantage of such a technology would be the loss of the pop music industry as songs about angst, misunderstanding and broken relationships became obsolete in a world where people said the right things, and happiness became so common that it would hardly be worth a song. A world in which everything was right and where there was no need to struggle would probably be a very dull place.