For more than a decade, being connected was treated as one of the great achievements of modern life. We were told that smartphones would make life easier. Social media would bring people closer together. Notifications would keep us informed. Streaming would give us unlimited entertainment. Algorithms would help us discover exactly what we wanted. And then came artificial intelligence. Now machines can write our emails, recommend our next holiday, summarize our meetings, create photographs, generate music and answer almost any question within seconds. Technology has never been more powerful. Yet something unexpected is happening in 2026.