Despite the many undoubted benefits of modern communications technology, there are some egregious drawbacks.

The ubiquitous ability to access and disseminate information in real time has provided me with a livelihood, but it has also come at some personal cost.

In 15 years of self-employment, I have never properly been able to switch off. Being at the end of a smartphone means I’m always “at work”, even when on holiday.

Thanks to the widespread availability of online information, we are no longer passive consumers of media chosen by someone else, but rather self-appointed curators of content.

From the moment we wake, we start to make editorial decisions about what we will read online, listen to on streaming services or watch on TV.

While this has been liberating and enlightening, it can also be paradoxically limiting and self-reinforcing. As well as being editors, we are also our own censors and, faced with so much choice, there is a natural human instinct to gravitate towards the familiar.

Am I alone in feeling that, having the equivalent of the British Library, or a Virgin Megastore, at our fingertips, has not opened a new universe of possibilities about what we read or listen to but has rather reinforced existing habits?

Who has not bemoaned the fact that, despite the multitude of cable and satellite channels and streaming services now available, there is still nothing to watch on TV?

Social media has provided billions of people with the ability to keep in touch with friends and family, unlimited by physical distance. And yet, for many, it has become a form of tyranny, locking them into patterns of behaviour........

© Herald Scotland