EVERY time my phone tings, I attend to it to see if it’s a reminder of official nature, an important email, or yet another news story by some publication house which is run in clouds with a network so widespread that the word infinite applies.

All smartphone users go through the same experience no matter the effort they put in to block unwanted pop-ups and notifications.

The phone cannot be blamed for these ‘tings’ as it is us — the users — who download apps without gauging their necessity. A gadget which was supposed to be our tool has instead enslaved human beings

I sometimes wonder whether we are entering an era where these bots will be holding meetings on the development of human intelligence (HI) similar to the present ones on artificial intelligence (AI).

I feel now is the time to introduce school-level lessons on mobile phone use so that forthcoming generations are prevented from becoming the Prisoners of Ting.

I also wonder how many times your phone ‘tinged’ while reading this.

M. Haris Zohaib Akbani

Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2018