East of Croydon

As we drove away [from a school she’d helped at], I saw a roadside shack with a makeshift sign proclaiming that ’4G was coming’. Those kids were on the cusp of change. 4G was indeed coming. Roaming. High-speed internet. Social media, Instagram, SnapChat, and all those shiny lozenge-shaped apps lined up on their phone inviting the scrutiny, the peer pressure, the keeping up with the Nguyens. In a click they would be able to see the panorama of piss-awful humanity, everything, good and bad, all at once. Pandora’s box open for ever. The information formerly wrought through trust and time – where you live, who you live with, your family, where you work, what kind of breakfast you like – now accessible in a click.

As first meetings go, sure, it had none of the historical grandeur of Edison meeting Ford, or Stalin meeting Roosevelt – but, let me tell you, if you ever find yourself in a clearing with a remote hill tribe, do park up on turd. It turns out it’s a real ice-breaker.

But I felt sad for us, for our ‘developed’ world that keeps on developing and developing and doesn’t know when to stop, that cannot help but expand without end. A world defined by acquisition and insatiable need, where are houses are filled with baubles, and where we pay for out-of-town storage outlets to contain the overspill of our excess possessions. But where, in our endless plans for expansion, do we consider or pursue the intangible? Happiness? Community? Mutual respect? Can we ever reclaim a time when we weren’t fearful and insular?