Technology

Two years ago my quality of life began to go downhill. It happened when BT Openreach gave our old copper landline a compulsory upgrade to ‘Digital Voice’, meaning all calls would be made over wifi. A succession of visiting engineers failed to resolve the crackling and the cutting out on the new digital line or the uninstructed diversion of incoming calls to voicemail. Worse, the new digital service wouldn’t extend to the bedroom: ‘It’s an old cottage, you see, with thick walls.’ Never mind that for decades I had spent many happy hours per day lying in bed (like Mrs Stitch, my role model) organising jobs and romantic partners for friends, jigsawing together the data – unearthed by longform chatting over the copper landline – to make the matches.

I can’t be the only neurotic mother to have rejoiced when the Princess of Wales revealed recently that she has a strict ‘no phones at the table’ rule. The Prince of Wales then later let slip that Prince George, who is 12, isn’t allowed a smartphone. When George eventually does get a phone, William added, it will be a brick without the internet – similar, one imagines, to the sort favoured by drug dealers. Hallelujah! Up until now, the best line for parents to trot out has been the old chestnut that ‘Silicon Valley guys send their children to schools where the tech use is unbelievably moderate because they know how addictive this stuff is’.

Usually when my tweenage sons ask about relics from my 1990s adolescence – ‘What’s a landline?’ ‘What’s a phone book?’ – we’ll have a good laugh about these obsolete artefacts of the not-so-distant past. But last year when my ten-year-old asked about ‘Immigrant Song’, which he’d heard on the soundtrack to a Marvel movie, and I replied, ‘Oh, I think it’s on the third Led Zeppelin album’, his response left me winded: ‘What’s an album?’ What’s an album? The horror! How had this abject failure of parenting happened? I’ve raised my kids in as analogue a household as possible, with piles of books, newspapers and magazines on every surface. I’ve limited screen time and kept them away from smartphones.

Doing the rounds on social media is the most disturbing advert I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you about it because you need to be forewarned, just in case this Christmas a child or a grandchild happens to mention that it might be an idea to record a video for posterity, and opens the 2wai app. 2wai is the company responsible for the ad, and the service it offers is the creation of AI versions of family members so that relatives can talk to them after they’re dead. Catch ’em while they’re still alive, says 2wai; film a three-minute interview and Bob’s your AI uncle. ‘Loved ones we’ve lost can be part of our future.’ That’s its catchphrase. The 2wai advert is about ‘Baby Charlie’, and it goes like this.