Porn is clogging the internet. When people are not watching dirty films, they are playing Angry Birds. In the US, digital innovation has spawned a solipsistic, atomised populace that is now exporting its lowest-common-denominator ways to the world.

I was a bit taken aback to hear this – particularly as it came from one of the technology industry’s leading figures, who swept aside my attempts to point to the good that digital devices have also done.

I had, all the same, been reflecting on a deterioration in modern manners. It has been a few years since I first seethed at someone checking his BlackBerry messages while talking to me. This week, I caught myself doing the same to someone else, treating the other person as if he wasn’t there, or didn’t matter.