Every electronics show, tech news website and magazine shows the latest and greatest laptop, television or phone, but is it me, or does it seem like nothing groundbreaking has appeared for a very long time?

After the somewhat inevitable, and no doubt self-inflicted, disappointment of the latest Apple announcement, I find myself wondering if there will ever be anything new to get excited about. Like the boss in the apocryphal story of the US Patent Office closing up shop at the end of the 19th century, I’m starting to think there’s nothing left to invent.

Have I been spoiled by Apple? Well no, not really. I do love my iPod, iPhone, iPad – all great leaps in design and usability, but still basically mobile computers however tiny and gorgeous. These are not new ideas, just better, prettier versions of old ones.

We seem to be on a mission honing and perfecting existing technologies and materials, coming up with ways to combine existing stuff to make slightly more compact and sometimes more useful other stuff. Don’t get me wrong, there are marvellous products out there, but just how large and pixel-dense do our tv screens need to be? How thin our phones and how portable our laptops? My computer is now as fast as I need it to be – it keeps up with me effortlessly. I rarely find myself staring mindlessly at a progress bar or spinning wheel, and long gone are the days of making a nice cup of tea waiting for the PC to boot. Storage is cheap, speedy and plentiful, whether flash- or disk-based, and communication is just about instantaneous.

I just want something to be in awe of. Something amazing. Something that changes our lives just a little, or a lot. The new cheap power source, AI, the web in my head, the end of poverty.

The creation of the internet happened during my lifetime, which is still an astonishing and humbling fact to me. It was a world-changing event and I don’t kid myself that something of that magnitude is going to happen more than once in a couple of generations. I was, however, recently buoyed up by the prospect of wearable interactive computers in the shape of glasses, and by the astonishing nanotechnology water repellent spray that could see an end to the eternal struggle against muddy shoes, car cleaning and that stubborn mould on my shower tray, but where are these magic bits of tech?

Am I just being spoilt, greedy, impatient, naïve? Probably. Maybe the great bounty of invention is over and it’s time to knuckle under and get it all working flawlessly, quietly, invisibly woven into the fabric of every day living. Or maybe I should invent some kind of stasis machine that can pop me a ten years ahead every once in a while, and watch the technology overtake my expectations for a change.