A revolution in human society has taken place with barely a word of comment. Older people might complain about young people inseparable from their smartphones, but the complaints are unheard, ineffectual. In ten years time, it will be hard to imagine what life was like before the smartphone revolution. Even now, there are moments when it is an effort for me to remember what life was like before the world became accessible from a device in my pocket.
It would demand a shift back fifty years for me to be sixteen or seventeen again, how did we stay in touch? It was difficult. Regular contact was with those from your own village or those you met at school; it was face to face conversation. Telephone calls were made from boxes and demanded penny and shilling coins. Many people did not have telephones, so they could only be called if they went to a public phonebox themselves, which meant the call had to be pre-arranged, and if pre-arrangement was necessary, it was much easier to say whatever needed to be said when you met someone, rather than trying to arrange a call, which, anyway, was expensive when you had only a few coins in your pocket. The other way of communicating was writing letters, but a letter posted on a Friday would probably receive no answer until Tuesday, it did not make for lively conversation.
To be honest, I would have loved to have grown up in the age of smartphones, in an age when the world’s information is only a google search away, in an age when conversations with friends need never end, in an age when no-one is cut off, when no-one has to be isolated.
In forty years time, Joyce will probably laugh remembering the primitive devices we had in 2016. We can no more imagine the world in 2056 than teenage boys with long hair and flared trousers could have imagined the smartphones we have now.
