Conjugate the verb "to pod". I pod, you pod, we pod, they pod … yes, the pod is set to come bursting out of solitary confinement thanks to a multitude of design innovations to whisk you and your overstuffed luggage around airports, send you cruising the oceans and at the end of it all give you a place to grab a quick snooze.
From this year, the pod will no longer be the lonely preserve of "I" because everybody will be in or on one. Or using one to open cans of soup. While we're on the subject, what is the ubiquitous Smart car if not two seats in a pod? And what shape is your computer mouse, anyway?
Thanks to a global assimilation by stealth, humans are becoming pod people - a development identified by Mark Sanders, British inventor of the Strida folding bicycle and all manner of household appliances, including his One-Touch pod-shaped can opener.
"There is a trend towards more human-centric aesthetics, which is appropriate for objects intimately close to humans," Sanders says.
"This is a shift from a traditional approach that makes economics, engineering and manufacturability the priority.
"I have put this human-centric philosophy into products. For example, taking the normally sharp-edged metallic can opener an turning it into an egg-shaped object that redefines what a can-opening tool can be - from something threatening to something intimate and friendly."
On a larger scale, the industrial-design world is already partly pod proportioned, not least when it comes to transport and sleepovers.