Questions of ownership of data and digital rights, already identified by the Liberal Democrat party, will also soon become mainstream concerns as consumers wake up to the reality that some services are not necessarily "free". The consumer and his or her data are the product that is sold. The state will also need to be prepared to confront digital oligopoly and ensure maximum competition in the interests of consumer power.

I reiterate, the possibilities of these new forms of technology are immense. But it is less than a decade since the West was agog at the new world the financiers and central bankers had created with seemingly endless growth. Unfortunately, there was a downside for which we were unprepared. The Second Machine Age is coming and it will bring more political turmoil.

Anyone hoping that after the slow recovery from the effects of the most recent financial crisis the global economy would settle down to a pre-crisis "normal" is going to be disappointed. Thanks to technology, the world is about to speed up again, rapidly. Conservatives who cannot acknowledge concerns about the downsides of technology and globalisation, who cannot empathise and design policy that protects the interests of those outside the small, globalised elite, are setting themselves up to be beaten by the next generation of populists from the Right or the Left, who will have an anti-globalisation message. The elite, they will say, opened the door of your country to uncontrolled immigration, signed away your democratic rights to supranational bodies and now their friends have sent a machine to make you poor or unemployed. Get ready.