The Appleization of society has reached an all-time high. As consumers and users of technology, we want instant gratification, intuitive interfaces and gadgets that ‘get’ us – as individuals. Which means that we’ve lost the ability to think and act for ourselves.

When the chips are down, the power’s out and there’s no network or signal, how will we cope? Just as city dwellers have lost the skills to survive in the wild, we are losing the capacity to live and work without our smart devices and services. We’ve become hostages to Apple, or Google, or Samsung.

Think about it for a moment. Are you lost without your smartphone? Can you call a cab without Uber? How do you find a restaurant and how do you pay, when your devices aren’t around? You carry cash? How bizarre!

It all started with GPS and satnav. Once we had a reliable service to tell us where to go, we stopped paying attention to the route. Anyway, Waze always knew the quickest way, despite the traffic. Then we couldn’t remember phone numbers, because that was the phone’s job! Even backups were automated, so we didn’t have to remember that either.

But now it’s worse, and Apple is the biggest culprit. Apple’s car software, smart home operating system and media ecosystem have made us slaves to convenience and simplicity. If we don’t have them at our fingertips, we’re lost, we don’t know what to do, how to get by or entertain ourselves. Which makes us kinda dumb, don’t you think?