Digital Dependency & the Lonely Crowd

‘She can multiply complicated figures in her head like lightning,” says Miss Honey, the schoolteacher in Roald Dahl’s Matilda, speaking of the title character. But the little girl’s father, Mr. Wormwood, is unmoved: “What’s the point of that when you can buy a calculator?”

The world has changed a lot since Matilda was first published in 1988. Now, the calculator is one of the more basic functions of another similarly shaped contraption, which is at once a telephone, a voice recorder, a camera, a virtual piano . . . and the list of its capabilities goes on.

About the Author

Madeleine Kearns

Madeleine Kearns is a former staff writer at National Review.

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‘She can multiply complicated figures in her head like lightning,” says Miss Honey, the schoolteacher in Roald Dahl’s Matilda, speaking of the title character. But the little girl’s father, Mr. Wormwood, is unmoved: “What’s the point of that when you can buy a calculator?”

The world has changed a lot since Matilda was first published in 1988. Now, the calculator is one of the more basic functions of another similarly shaped contraption, which is at once a telephone, a voice recorder, a camera, a virtual piano . . . and the list of its capabilities goes on.