KEITH NEWBERY Stop the world, I think I need to take a breather...

I was determined to keep up with every innovation. No technological enhancement would pass me by. I would remain at the cutting edge of the brave new world.

Yet here I sit banging out this column on a seven-year-old computer (which enjoys a fitful relationship with a moody modem) while listening to an analogue radio.

This evening I shall sit down before a non-plasma, non-LCD television which is so old and heavy that if I attempted to hang it on the front-room wall it would bring the side of the house down.

My mobile phone is so antiquated, I can use it only as a telephone. How Luddite is that?

It won’t take photographs, record moving images or produce Delia Smith recipes at the flick of a forefinger.

Its texting capability is so slow that I have to pause between each letter – and as I refuse to use the execrable ‘text-speak’, I could send a carrier pigeon in the time it takes me to inform my wife that Tesco has run out of gravy browning.

While I don’t necessarily want to get off, I would like the world to stop for a moment and let me take a breather.

There’s no chance of that, though, with the news the wonder-kid behind Facebook (I’m not on it and never will be) is about to launch a messaging service which he reckons will sound the death knell for the email.

Mark Zuckerberg (for it is he) is about to come up with this snazzy contraption which will enable people to send a message in any way they choose – text, email or Facebook message.

It will arrive via any one of these means of communication (or all three as far as I can tell) and can be replied to in a similarly random manner.

The ether will be abuzz with small talk and there will be no escape.

‘I had my phone turned off’ will no longer be a good enough excuse to ignore your cyberspace tormentors.

I now know how comedian Steven Wright felt when he said: “This morning I made a cup of instant coffee in a microwave and went back in time.”