Smartphones...

The backlash has begun. A Guardian article recommends getting out into the spring sunshine, over the Easter holiday, without mediating the experience through the screen of a smartphone. “Like the old-fashioned tourist’s camera, a smartphone swaps the immediacy of experience for an anticipation of its memory”.

People are spending ever more time engaging with their smartphones: tapping, scrolling, swiping, taking selfies, receiving notifications, updating their Facebook profiles, uploading pictures of their lunch to Instagram, or just gazing at their handsets, waiting for something - anything - to happen.

The article writer ends with this heartfelt plea. “Put your phone down and leave it there a while. Grab the world with both hands instead and get them dirty: garden, make something, or cook a meal; eat without photographing it first. Lose yourself in the present around you”. Amen to that…

The docks at Goole...