I will be compared to Shakespeare by 2518 M

Y latest computing disaster caused me to reflect how life has changed in recent decades. For those who don’t know, my mini PC crashed leaving me up the internet creek without a paddle.

All major files and photographs are stored on a back-up hard-drive. It was just a handful of current files that were lost: Like my tax returns and notes for the Examiner column.

They are now floating around in the ether and could be rediscovered by a computer science student 500 years from now who, taking into account inflation, will wonder how anyone could survive on an income equivalent to three groats a week.

At the same time, he will be dazzled by my command of the written English language that has, by the year 2518, been reduced to dots, dashes and texting abbreviations, and rendered the works of William Shakespeare only accessible to academics specialising in hieroglyphics.

You get the drift. Time changes everything.

When I started as a court reporter in days of yore, I wrote my copy by hand on sheets of paper as cases progressed, and it was collected and taken to the office by an elderly chap whose occupation was runner, although I doubt if he could have broken into a swift walk to save his life.

My work was then subbed and put into hot metal print.

When out of office, reporters used telephone kiosks from which to dictate stories to a copy-taker. Photographers rushed back to the dark room to develop film and print the results.

The internet, mobile phones and instant communication had not been invented and, while the process of journalism then might seem leisurely now, the pace and pressure were hectic to meet deadlines. Everything has changed.

We used to have more bobbies on the beat, buses and trams had conductors as well as drivers, grocery shops with personal service, Royal Mail deliveries twice a day and holidays in Filey instead of allinclusive wrist-band packages to the Dominican Republic.

Innovation has increased and almost a quarter of today’s British workers are worried their jobs will be taken over by robots and automation in the near future.

Deliveries? We have a drone for that. Sales? Log on and take your pick. It has also brought benefits in medicine, keyhole surgery, longer life expectancy and employment guided by health and safety rather than sticking children up chimneys.

But the society and work practices with which many of us grew up, now seem as ancient as apothecaries, a Gutenberg printing press and the bubonic plague.

The good old days often seem better in retrospect but were they?

Progress has always been with us, only the pace has increased so that today’s technology gives the past a sepia tone.

A bit like me.