THERE’S SOMETHING ENDURINGLY disconcerting about flying into Silicon Valley from Australia, where you arrive before you leave. If Silicon Valley can do time travel as easily as that, what can’t it do?

You take off late in the afternoon, the A380 banking left over the south-east corner of Sydney, and then about lunchtime that same day, you end up funnelled out the other end through the every-city boundaries of immigration, baggage pick-up and customs – in this case, in San Francisco. Blinking, you look for your Uber to deliver you to your Airbnb. Is this a parallel time zone, or a parallel universe?