A touching display

LET’S BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES: we were already on phones far too often before COVID-19 swept into our lives. We’re constantly clicking and scrolling, zooming and swiping with our fingertips in a way that has become completely automatic as we seek information, entertainment and connection. Reading and note-taking on phones have become so second nature that I’ve caught myself more than once attempting to scroll down a physical paper page by running my finger along it.

Hard as it is to believe, there was once a pre-touchscreen world. And although Gen Z, who have had no experience of that world, can be forgiven for imagining dinosaurs may have roamed the Earth at the time of the first touchscreen, feebly swatting at it with their tiny T. rex arms, the rest of us (yes, even millennials like me) can dimly recall a time when swiping across a screen was something you only did to clean it.

Touchscreen tech has brought with it a whole new vocabulary – apps, swiping, pinch-to-zoom –