Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.

Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun?

It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.

Facebook is not ideologically neutral. In fact, it emerges from a very particular world view which we can trace back to Hobbes. I discovered this by examining the profile of Zuckerberg's fellow board members who, unlike him, are a very interesting bunch and, I suspect, the real power behind the poster boy.

We think we have to work because the advertising industry has elevated wants into needs. The newspapers and the television batter us incessantly with the latest "must-haves", whether that's shoes, videogames or patio heaters. As a result, mums think they "have" to work at Tesco in order to buy expensive trainers.

Computers tend to separate us from each other - Mum's on the laptop, Dad's on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.

One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?