It was September 13, 2021, and I was having a “here, there, and everywhere” WhatsApp convo with a friend from Mobay. We had worked for years with the same company, and when she travelled to Kingston for monthly management meetings, she’d sit next to me and do the most complex things while vigorously contributing to the discussion. She was scrolling online for affordable airline tickets and hotel rooms, transferring money across her bank accounts, clicking ‘purchase’ on Amazon, chatting with friends on Twitter, ‘liking’ photos on Facebook, and directing our staff in the Western region.
Knowing her love for, reliance on, and mastery of the digital landscape, I wrote in our WhatsApp convo that humans weren’t made for such great attention saturation, and something was gonna give one day. There would eventually come a time when the “in thing” would be to become the “out thing”.
I imagined her whooping with laughter as she chided, “Get with the times, Max!” But guess what? More and more these days, I am seeing news that this is actually happening.
The latest is a CNN Business article, dated January 18, 2026 entitled, “Tired of AI, People Are Committing to the Analog Lifestyle in 2026.” When I shared it with my friend—how people were now learning to knit, take photos with real cameras and print them, write and post letters—she was honest enough to admit, “For real, man!!! The world needs a reboot!”
