Dear Diary,

This article has been uploaded to my website at warp speed, apparently.

Our village now has access to full fibre broadband, a pretty big deal around these parts.

We had previously been upgraded with fibre cable to the village cabinet, but they hadn’t replaced the old copper wires that pole-hopped to all the houses.

It was still a significant improvement on the original dial-up connection, remembered for its madness-inducing slow speeds and general unreliability, not to mention the telephonic beeps and screeches that are now indelibly etched on my brain.

My new connection is well over ten times faster than that first upgrade, so they say, but after all the expectation, I can’t say I’ve noticed any practical change. Everything seems to work just like before.

Another example, perhaps, of technology now reaching beyond ‘enough’ in a desperate bid to maintain momentum. Mobile phones have been doing this for a while, but I guess knowing it’s better or faster helps satiate our modern behavioural addiction to technology.

I’m getting a bit tired of it now to be honest, and it got me thinking about all the tech I’ve upgraded over the years - and it’s a lot.

I grew up pre-digital, which makes me sound like I’m from the 18th Century, but it’s simply a reminder of the rapid, exponential growth of technology within my lifetime.

My generation is unique in that we bridge two very different worlds. A childhood untouched by computers, mobile phones, social media, or digital television, but as young adults we were suddenly confronted with the beginning of a new digital age, and we’ve been indoctrinated ever since.

I suppose the first big tech upgrade that I remember was in the seventies when we got our first colour television set. My father brought it home one evening after work and, after removing our old black and white set from the corner of the living room, set up the new TV in its place.

There were still only three aerial broadcast television channels, but it was a technological marvel. It was a sleek, modern, wood-veneer model on four legs, with six touch-sensitive channel ‘buttons’ - three more than required!

When the tip of your finger bridged the gap between the two smooth metal surfaces on each button, it switched channel, as if by magic. No clunky mechanical push or knob tuning, just a slight brush of the finger and zap, another channel.

Then came pocket calculators - introduced when I was at high school and bemoaned by some as lazy or harmful to cognitive development. We quickly learned that 5319009 spelled ‘boobies’ when viewed upside-down so, arguably, they had a point.

It was a hint of what was to come. Within a few years we had video tape recording, answering machines, compact discs, the Sony Walkman, personal computers, email, home printers, mobile phones, and more.

For context, I bought my first home computer and mobile phone in my early thirties - as I write this, half my life was already lived. They were now essential to keep pace at work, but also socially.

By today’s standards they were expensive, slow, limited in functionality, and quickly obsolete. They were also comically huge. Mobile phones were literal bricks. Home computers and their bulky monitors required their own furniture that transformed our living spaces, a physical representation of the sudden tech intrusion into all our lives.

But perhaps not as intrusive as our next challenge, artificial intelligence, most likely the harbinger of a new age.

Like the pocket calculator, it feels like a hint of what’s to come, and right now the impact on our human potential, and on our beleaguered environment, is simply incomprehensible. If our tech is already delivering more than enough, who will this new technology actually serve?

When my father switched on the new set and tuned into the first channel, Captain James T Kirk suddenly materialised wearing a green top, Mr Spock was in blue. The Starship Enterprise launched into a kaleidoscope of colour and the universe suddenly expanded.

As we are further propelled, at warp speed, into the unknown, where no-one has gone before, are we still truly exploring, or have we become lost in space?

[Cartoons from the archive, previously published in 2023]