One of the nice things about living by the coast and running your own business is that you can take the afternoon of your birthday off and sit on the beach in the Spring sunshine. Don't be jealous: this benefit is offset by the ongoing hassles of maintaining a Web site single-handedly. I deserve a few breaks, honest.

Anyway, as I sit on the beach typing this (yes, I've still got the Psion 5mx), I'm doing a bit of people-watching. Hove has a stony beach, and almost everyone walking along it feels the urge to throw stones into the sea. Women walking dogs, men walking children, teenagers walking rebelliously, even a friend's 18 month-old son couldn't resist the temptation to contribute to natural erosion. And I do it myself.

Why? Are we all taught to do this as children? Is there an evolutionary advantage? Are we improving our hand-eye co-ordination? The latter seems unlikely, as the sea's quite a big target; even baby Joseph managed to hit it on his third attempt. Maybe we're all destructive vandals at heart. Or maybe it's the pleasure of affecting something at a distance, of seeing the splash and knowing that we caused it without actually being right there.

With no supporting evidence whatsoever, I'll go for that last explanation: action at a distance. The desire to influence - or be influenced by - things that are far away seems to be a component of human nature, and it's the fundamental basis for communications technology.

Television, radio, wired telephones, the Internet, mobile telephones and most recently wireless networking: all involve action at a distance. And conveniently, this fatuous piece of flawed reasoning also explains my childhood desire for a radio-controlled car as a birthday present. I never did get one. Not that I'm bitter.

So, as the new financial year comes into view, I think it's time I put my money where my wandering mind is. I'll be investing a few hundred quid in companies that are launching new and interesting ways of acting at a distance (although I'll probably steer clear of teledildonics). Then again, maybe I'll just blow it all on a radio-controlled car.