Was I invisible? The chairman of the meeting allowed one man to dominate the discussion, ignoring my raised hand and futile attempts at eye contact. I was desperate to join the debate and to correct the misassumptions. In my frustration I scribbled a note for Professor PR, seated to my right: ‘This is crazy. Has he never heard of data mining?’ When the speaker introduced a set of rogue statistics to back up his spurious claims I reached for my iPhone. It would take no time to recalculate the figures. It was only then that I discovered that a cunning thief had stolen my iPhone and replaced it with an ancient mobile on the Orange network. My Blackberry was also missing. I was devastated.