My iPhone has packed up. I know, I know – you feel my pain. Tomorrow, I lose the phone altogether for a full 24 hours while it is, hopefully, repaired to its former glory. This is beyond inconvenience, this is panic stations.
How did I get so dependent so quickly? The thing is, you can’t de-evolve. People don’t un-develop. There are always Luddites, but you don’t hear much these days about the caveman who didn’t want to jump on the whole wheel bandwagon, do you?
So I’m struck by all the magic in my house. Really, it might as well be magic, because I sure as hell can’t explain it: WiFi – I just walk about the place, accessing the Internet in the office, the kitchen, the garden, halfway down the front drive, printing things out willy-nilly as I go; the ground-source heating system – it takes heat directly out of the Earth and uses it to make the floors agreeably warm; the hob – it cooks the food, but it doesn’t get hot. The latter is clearly the devil’s work and I don’t trust it. But then, I still make the kids go out of the room when I use the microwave, so...
We may call it technology, but really it’s just magic. If the Inquisition ever comes to my house, they’ll burn me as a witch. I must get an App for that.