Forgive me if I sound a little sceptical here.

I'm reading this article about a new phone designed by a Britishdesigner (chances are he owns an Apple Powerbook Pro) for a Swiss electronic products manufacturer. I'm in Australia so I'm reading the Guardian online article on my Chinese manufactured Anroid smart phone although it could just a easily have been using my Microsoft Surface tablet / laptop or my all-in-one desktop if I was at home. Later I shall tweet. I'll check my Facebook page and maybe see something there - on YouTube - that'll make me laugh. It could have a cat in it or be a Walking Dead meme.

That all seems pretty ordinary to me in the second decade of the 21st Century but as a 58 year old man I am nothing like as engaged with the smart technologies and their apps as the smart generations that are transforming the world.

But here's the thing - I have my relationships at home which function more or less as well or otherwise as they did or didn't 30 years ago. I have all sorts of social relations beyond the home and not online. I may even delude myself into thinking some of them have meaning (for me) and are purposeful: a work colleague's leaving do tomorrow, a friend's second child's Christening on Sunday, another friend and her 13 year old foster child coming to stay next week on holiday during which time the thirteen year old will go to the local glass artist studio with my glass artist partner to learn how to slump hot glass to make butterflies.

All of us connected as humans in a real world. Our smart technologies and platforms facilitate those connections. We all know where the off buttons are located if we really need to find them although, as sentient beings, we simply put down the phone, tablet or PC and pick up a book, get on the bicycle or bus, engage differently in whatever way we can or choose.

I just don't buy into all the cod sociological doom that comes with this guy's retro phone. I don't believe that smart phones, Facebook, Periscope or Apple are taking us to Hell in a handcart where anomie, alienation and the collapse of civilisation await.

It's a phone. Buy it or not because it's a product you want or don't want. Spare us the sociology lecture though. I have the suspicion it's much the same pitch as the papyrus salesman made to the world when the paper makers set up shop.