These days, I’m no longer required to stretch my memory. When I say to Jocasta, “You know, that actress, the one I love, the one in The Kids Are All Right, my favourite film, well, she’s in this new TV series...”

Old days: Summon the librarians! Send them down into the vaults! Rustle, rustle. Give me a moment. That’s right: Julianne Moore. There was pleasure in firing up the synapses and coaxing the name from its hidey-hole.

Now, as soon as the blank spot appears, I’m googling away, denying my mental librarians the chance to even arise from their chairs. My God, they must be bored up there.

Next thing: my sense of direction. OK, I still know the location of the Blue Mountains, and could probably find Cronulla. Yet these skills are based on pre-digital knowledge. Take me to a new town and I turn on Apple Maps and do whatever the lady says. Turn left, turn right, take the tunnel. If the internet went down, I’d be unable to locate my own bum.

Arithmetic? I used to be world-class, my skills honed by long days working behind the counter of my father’s newsagency. Six Bex powders, a carton of Winfield Blue and a copy of “Best Bets”? “Certainly, sir, that will be $19.73. And here’s 27 cents change from your $20.”

Now I reach for assistance upon confronting the simplest of sums. Sharing the $150 cafe bill between three people? Now, where’s my phone?

Loading

With each passing month, the digital world subsumes another human skill. My office email system, for example, has begun to offer a suggested response as soon as I hit reply. Mostly it suggests I say “Thanks, see you then,” presumably to spare me the enormous emotional and intellectual labour of composing and then typing the phrase “Thanks, see you then.”

I never use this function as it seems impolite. My response, when personally composed, will hopefully include some detail about them, me, our relationship, our workplace. It’s a moment that honours the individuality of a follow human.

What a waste of five seconds!

Perhaps, in time, both sides of an email exchange will be written by machines, leaving humanity with the sole task of just sitting there, turning the machine off, and then on, whenever it stops working.

Meanwhile, it’s open season on every human skill. The 20-second video, as seen on TikTok and Insta, is reprogramming humanity’s concentration span. It’s the most problematic part of The Great Deskilling. Some students, when asked to analyse a 22-minute sitcom, now have difficultly because of the patience-sapping length of the art form. Couldn’t the writers of Seinfeld speed it up a little?

In the end, I’m starting to feel grateful my spellcheck no longer works. Perhaps I should hope for a bug that takes out Apple Maps, Google, all my social media, and that program that composes my email responses.

After a few weeks free from my digital masters, I might even become vaguely human.