There are many ways in which the internet has had a negligible effect on our personal lives. We still go to the movies. We like having supper with friends. We gossip over a beer or a coffee; we ask, and get asked, for dates; we save up for holidays to help us unwind on a sandy beach. Football stadiums fill up on a Saturday afternoon, as do the best angling spots. We love going to see the Rolling Stones, again.

None of these pastimes – let’s call them the western way of life – is much transformed by engagement with the internet, other than in the trivial sense of making it easier to book tickets or tables. The physical essence of what we do bears a remarkable similarity to what we did 20 or 30 years ago.