6.23 /// Has Tech Ruined The Moment?

Your phone can do almost anything, yet it is getting harder to switch off, stay present, and enjoy simple moments. I’m Stephen, and I’m asking a blunt question: has technology ruined our enjoyment of things, and ruined us along the way? Coming at it as a Xennial who remembers the analogue 80's and 90s, I look at how quickly “optional” tech became the default for home, school, work and even downtime.

I talk about the habit side of smartphone life: waking up to clear notifications, scanning social media, checking email and banking, then calling it normal because it is easy. I share why being offline, even briefly, can feel like a relief, and why doomscrolling and constant access can quietly chip away at attention, movement, and real conversation. Digital wellbeing is not about hating tech; it is about noticing the patterns it creates and deciding what deserves your time.

From there, I zoom out to the UK high street and the way online shopping reshapes towns like my home town Crewe, where traffic, parking costs, and cheap delivery pull people away from browsing in person. Then we get into AI: the genuinely useful productivity wins, the worry about job displacement, and why I think human creativity still matters even when tools get clever. I finish with a simple idea. Keep the computers in the background, let people stay in the driving seat, and bring back a bit more analogue living where it counts. If this hits home, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review. What would you personally dial back first?

Transcript

Stephen 0:04

Hello, welcome to another episode of Infinite Prattle. On today's episode, I'll be talking about has technology ruined our enjoyment of things and ruined us. Let's get into that. Hello and welcome to Infinite prattle! unscripted unedited prattle on everything. Hosted by me, Stephen.

Growing Up Analogue Then Digital

Notifications As A Morning Habit

Online Shopping And High Street Decline

Early Mobiles And Memory Loss

AI Helpfulness Versus Job Loss

A Future With Humans Leading

Physical Buttons And Quitting Doomscrolling

Your Take And How To Respond

Stephen 0:45

Hello, welcome back to another hopefully successful episode of Infinite Prattle. With some sort of clarity. I can't guarantee, because if you're you know, a listener of this podcast, it is called Infinite Prattle for a reason. And if you're new, then just be aware that none of this is scripted if you haven't been able to tell already. So, today's episode is really just about the influence of technology, probably over the last 30 years. Um I'm uh a Xennial as they would call, so I'm kind of in between Gen X and a millennial. Kind of like I did a podcast on it um quite a few episodes back now in this season. Uh just basically talking about um that kind of niche kind of demographic which I kind of fall in between. So I was born in 1983, so I know analogue stuff. My parents were from the analogue age, I know a lot of stuff from like the 50s, 60s and 70s, um, but also grew up with technology, so the advent of like home computing, home gaming, mobile phone technology, emails, computers, etc., becoming more integrated into our life at home and into work and school. And it's strange to say that now, to be honest, because when I speak to friends and family and their kids and stuff, like iPads and computers are like a norm. I mean, they're even expected to use an iPad at home. It's got at home, it's almost part of like the curriculum that it's expected to go home and use technology. Um but I've I've been thinking about this, and I I am a technology lover. I'll I'll I'll kind of like caveat this episode with that. I absolutely love technology. Um I love what it can do for you, how it can help you. Like I love to mess on the computer, like you know, I've got my I've got my Mac in the background here that you can see. Um yes, I'm a Mac user. Um I have a Windows computer for work. Um But the things that we can do nowadays, like I've got a YouTube channel, and that's open to pretty much anyone. If you've got the ability to film yourself or um even produce audio, you can have a podcast and and really, really basic equipment um to do that. So it doesn't take a lot of effort nowadays because the technology's there. It's become available for a wider audience, it's become available for um at a cheaper price. It's become affordable, which is great, which is great, it's amazing, it's amazing, and I and I and I'm down for it, I'm I'm here for it. Um but where it falls down for me is where there's like a grey area of where that technology kind of oozes into the parts of your life, you don't really need it. Now, a few episodes back I did an episode about you know coming back from the cruise and how that was kind of helpful for me, it was nice and relaxing, and I didn't have a mobile phone signal because I was being cheap. I say being cheap, the internet cost on the ferry on the on the on the cru I keep calling it a ferry, on the cruise ship was r was extortion in my view. But I enjoyed not having that access, so I did pay for it a couple of times just to sense check because there was stuff going on I needed to check. Um But I I kind of liked not having the ability to just go on emails because it it's like a thing now, it's like a habit. Uh and it's not necessarily a good habit that you know I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is clear notifications off my phone. That's literally the first thing I do. So I'll go into Facebook, I might even look at stuff now. I literally go ahead and just clear the notifications, close the app, go it go into Instagram, clear the notifications. I might might scroll for a second, but I will clear my Instagram notifications. Go into email, see what emails I've got, delete them, file them, done. You know, check my bank, you know, if I've had any notifications of payments have gone out, make sure they're alright, bang, close that down. So there's a process in the morning now that I I will do, it's like a habit I've gotten into because of the way we access technology and everything's already there. Whereas only a short while ago I would have had to get up and check emails on a laptop or a or a desktop computer, which was not as easy to do, so it wasn't something I did as regularly, unless I was expecting an email. And in that case I would probably like leave my computer on or check it more regularly. But it was it was a case that I wouldn't really check it unless I needed to, which is crazy to think about nowadays. But that's the issue. And that's me we don't really get a break from it. We have this little computer in our pockets, it's a camera, it's a video camera, it's everything. It's our lives on a device, and they're not cheap, like these things cost a lot of money, so you want to keep kind of use them and get the most out of them. And I think they're a bit of a blessing and a curse now. And I think that it's I think it's actually affecting society now. Um and the generations that went up that have not known anything different, they don't see the issue with it because they don't know any different. Whereas someone like me, and and maybe the millennials as well, um will have known what it was like in the 90s to, you know, have a cassette, have a CD, uh have to change media, you know, have nothing that's instantly on demand in your pocket, have to have a conversation with someone, see people face to face. Um yeah, it it's quite it's quite shocking how things have changed. And it's changing the dynamic of society and business. Um where I live in Crewe in Cheshire, um, the town centre isn't half as much of what it used to be, because people don't go into the town centre because of the advent of of home shopping and out-of-town shopping, and traffic puts people off. Crew is terrible for traffic. Um I used to go into town a lot when I lived a little bit closer to the town, uh, and I don't live a million miles away now. Crew's not huge. Um but it's far it's far enough away now that I would have to go into town and realistically drive. I wouldn't have to, but I I I do. But parking's expensive and there's been a slow decline of shops available in Crew Town Centre that um are varied. Yeah, great if you go into Crew Town Centre in general. If you want a vape, a mobile phone, a charity shop. Um and and that's pretty much it. There are a few other shops, I am exaggerating slightly. There are a few other shops. Um and I'm hoping it's on hoping it's on the turnaround because me and Sarah went in. Uh we had a spate of we're good we we have to go in again actually. We really need to keep it up. But we we we had a spate um in February and March where we were going in a bit more frequently, and it was actually nice to see how busy it was, and that's something you're gonna encourage shops to do. So I can moan as much as I want about the town centre declining and the shift, but I'm part of that. I'm part of that. But it takes like the whole community to kind of keep that going, and it keeps and it takes politicians and the local district to keep prices down in in rents, so shops can be competitive. Because let's face it, would you really leave your armchair if the thing in the shop is the same as the thing on Amazon and it'll come to your door and you don't have to move? And that that's the situation we've got into. So technology moving forward in that way, and commerce moving forward, uh, being able to just order stuff from from the from your armchair on your phone is uh is a massive problem, I I would say. Because even when you have to turn your laptop on or your computer on, you you might be like, oh well, you know, by the time I've turned that on and I've gone on the websites and blah blah blah blah, I could I could be in town and I'll see it face to face, I can pick up the object, um, and I'll buy it. And and I still love that experience, I still love the experience of going to a shop and browsing, but in the back of my mind, I am still thinking, I know that's probably like 10% cheaper on Amazon, or that's 10% cheaper on there, or I could probably get at half price, or and then you've got Timu and Shane and Alien Barber or whatever it's called, and all all these other all these other sites that offer ridiculously cheap items that the shops just can't compete with, and they might be slightly lower quality, but in general, it's like it does what it needs to do. I'll I'll put up with that. And that alongside the whole technology of it always being in your pocket and bang paid for kind of makes makes our life super super easy, but it also means that we're probably getting less exercise, uh you know, less interaction, and it's I think it's definitely having a having a negative effect on society. Now I remember mobile phones kind of not being invented because they were invented in the 70s, I believe. Um, but the def I was definitely in the era of mobile phones becoming accessible to just the general public. You didn't have to be a high-flying stockbroker to afford a mobile phone. It became probably like 97-ish, 96-97, where phones were coming to the like public domain, let's say. Um, and I remember my mum and dad, I remember my dad getting a phone uh from the company he worked for, which was Virgin, and they started a phone, a phone network, and they sent him a free phone. Um and my mum had a a cheap phone at the time that uh Asda was selling, which is part of Walmart for for my American listeners and viewers. Um and that they had these Philips phones that were like super basic, they were literally they were the size of a big chocolate bar, basically, with an antenna. And they were the most basic, you could text off them. I think you could text off them. Because there were phones when they first came out that you couldn't text. SMS was not a thing. I'm pretty sure you could text them, and they literally phoned people and had a basic phone book in, and that was it. Um I think if you blow 2530, you might be surprised by that. But that's all that's all it was, it was just a phone that was mobile. That was the whole idea. It was a a mobile phone, you didn't have to play games on it, there was there was no idea of it being a an email device. Email was still young in its computer version, let alone being on your mobile device. Um and yeah, that was that was a game changer when you got mobile phones, because you think to yourself, like before we had mobile phones, what did we do? Well you had to memorise numbers. That that's the crux of it. You had to memorize numbers and you had to go to a telephone and dial that number, or you had to write them down and carry something on you that had the numbers written in, like a little address book. And we did that back in the day. We we did that, and I could remember numbers, I remember I could I can still can remember my old house number now, and I remembered my mum, dad's, my and my brother's mobile phone numbers that I had them memorised, which is crazy to me now because I've been with my wife 10 years and I know the last three digits of her number and the first two digits, let's let's say that. So I know I know less than 50% of her phone number. I don't have to remember it because it's in my phone. Technology is making us stupid, uh it's making us use our brains less. And when you think about it, that's what it's there for. That that the whole purpose of technology is to is to increase our productivity in other ways. It's meant to take some weight off you so it does a bit of the legwork so you don't have to. And again, I'm all for that. But I think it's still at the detriment of people that that's doing it. And and AI is a massive thing. AI is a big thing at the moment where it's taken a lot of our thought processes away, it's taking a lot of our processes away. Um I I use it a little bit at work, not not lots, but it it's handy for certain things. So like I use copilot at work because it's integrated with Microsoft, and my company pays for that Microsoft license. But I can I can just say copilot, copy, I can copy a um copy of um and a URL into Copilot and just say make it make a QR code. Um make it a PNG file, uh, so it's got a clear background, so it's got a transparent background. I can drop writing into it and say, make this a PNG file, remove the background, and it'll do it, and it just does it, and it's brilliant. I can ask it to summarize emails, I can ask it to look through my inbox and find out any emails that have got actions on me or might imply actions, I can ask it then for a list of things to do. It's incredible, and I've got no problem with stuff like that because that would actually save my brain some hurt. But when it starts to take people's jobs, is where I've kind of got a little bit of an issue. Certain things you think, yeah, that's inevitable. Throughout of human history, we've invented things that have taken jobs away. Uh, for example, me and me and my wife went to a linen mill museum, and we've been one in in the UK, we went to one in Ireland, we've been one in the UK, and basically the Industrial Revolution revolutionised the way mills worked and linen was produced from where from it being handmade in in looms to massive, huge mechanical, steam-driven looms or water-powered looms. Um and that eliminated people. The people were there to oversee the machinery, so there were kind of higher skill jobs then, uh, but there was a lot less people doing it, and and I get that, it moves on and moves on and moves on, but there was always some human interaction, whereas AI is really, really, really destroying certain parts of the industry's uh in industry, and I think like, you know, personal assistance, like when AI gets good enough, personal assistance will not be needed, secretaries might not be needed, you know, note-takers, like administration work, like could all be eliminated if AI gets good enough and it's trustworthy enough. Which is crazy, because for me, the idea of someone that's doing admin work or sectarial work or it the human interaction is key there, uh, and context is key. But if it gets good enough, gone. Um and then you've got it going into further things where it it you know I think Disney just announced that they were they were reducing their um illustration staff and their design team, I think it was. Don't know the full details of it, but it's because they're starting to use AI generation. So they're getting rid of actual people that can draw and design stuff because AI is becoming that good that they can kind of replace them. It's it's learning their style, which is which is insane. Uh and I don't think you can replace human creativity with a with a with a bot or a robot or um AI. It just doesn't have that sim that same flair. And even if you compare even some of the best AI videos now, I think your brain still knows that something's a bit off. Whereas a human could maybe adjust that and and and make it better and and actually um have just have that kind of creativity, um, that creative brain to lead that. So I I'm I'm kind of concerned a little bit. I I mean I love technology and I will always pursue it, but I I always I'm missing that kind of I think I've said it before, I'm missing kind of like that analogue edge to things still. So it would be nice if we could kind of get to a point in life where I kind of always come back to Star Trek really, get to the point in life where computers are in the background doing things, but people are the main driving force behind everything still. So AI might be managing, you know, the lighting or the temperature of your house, but you're still doing things inside your house, you know, you you're not you're not having to think about that because it's happening, but you can still adjust stuff, um, and that's that's not really high-level thought to the fact that you know it's monitoring things for you. So you've got computer engineers that are doing the legwork on programming and designing stuff, but the AI is monitoring in the background to alert you of things. I think that's great because that's something a human might not be very good at. AI could do that, but you've still got the human leading everything and designing stuff and then pushing the pushing everything forward in a controlled manner. And I think there's a place for AI, I really do, uh, and and all technology, but I'd like to see things go back to a little bit more of a an analogue human um human effort, you know, human effort. Bring back the high street, you know, bring back going to physical shops, bring back um, you know, going to your butcher, going to your your greengrocer, um and just going and browsing around shops and then going for a coffee instead of the high street just being coffee shops. Um and I'm all for a good coffee, I love coffee. Um, but I I do miss walking into town before work. I when I used to do shifts, I used to like go in town before the afternoon shift and wander around, have a coffee. Um and then I'd choose like a few shops every every day to go into. Um and that was that was me. I'd I I enjoyed that. Um but I I don't do that anymore. Uh and it's made me. I I I think genuinely it's it's it's had an impact on my health and and and well being. Yeah, I I definitely think we should go back more analogue. I was showing Sarah just before I came upstairs to to record this. I was showing her the Teenage Engineering Um TP7, which is like a dictaphone audio input device. Uh, and it's an amazing little bit of kit. It's ridiculously expensive, I would say. You you would know if I'd won some money because you would see it sat on the shelf behind me. Uh so if you ever see one of them on the shelf behind me, I've either got given one, stole it, or won won won the lottery. Um and basically all it is, it's a dictaphone, but it's got a little it it it has moving parts and physical buttons. So for me that's like the best of both worlds because it's a digital device with analogue inputs. And I love that, I love that, I love that on cars, I love that on anything. I love a physical button to press. Uh I love that interaction, that ergonomic nature, that anthropomorphic um anthropometric, should I say, interaction. Um yeah. Bring that back, bring that back. Um stop all these doom scrollers sat in cafes not talking, um, you know, filming concerts with instead of watching it, live in the moment. People don't live in the moment anymore. They're too tired to the device. We need an untethering from devices, and I think recently I've been shown that, and I've I I think I have been actively less on my phone. Um, I've deleted loads of apps um that I don't need. I don't need them. I don't why do I need them? I don't, I don't need them. Uh so that's it, it's gone. Um Yeah. It's a bit food for thought. That's that's just some of my thoughts on the whole. Like, is technology hindering us? And I I think it is. I think it is. I think it I don't think it's having the best effect on us right now. And I'm not I'm not normally political, but some of the stuff in the news you don't know what to believe because of how technology Has aided and hindered the press. Um so yeah, we just need maybe to dial it back a bit. So that's my thoughts. What do you think? Do you agree with me? Do you think that technology should be pushing forward? Do you think we should go full into everything? Is it up to people to choose? Should companies be restricting certain services? Um don't get me started on subscription services. Everything's a subscription now. Yeah, but what do you think? Let me know. Like, comment down in the in the in the comments. And if you're on uh listening audio, in the comments you can actually send me a text message now that I can actually reply to. So there's a bit of interaction there. Uh, if you're watching on YouTube, you can't actually listen just audio and vice versa. So if you listen to audio, you can go to YouTube and watch. Um yeah, but thanks very much for listening and watching, and until next time until next time, you know, take care of yourselves, look after each other, and remember to keep on prattling. Thanks for listening to InfinitePrattle with your host Steven. Follow me on social networks at InfinitePrattle and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks very much.