The X Files did a good job of embracing the mobile phone to advance the plot. One character is sneaking around a warehouse, while another character is in a lab coat, frowning at a test tube. One calls the other, they quickly explain (for the benefit of the audience) what they are doing, and then we move on to the next scene. Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother does a good job of telling a story that involves a world of youths interconnected by technology, rather than a world where technology must be disabled in order make room for the traditional plot (e.g. the character snooping around the warehouse will, as soon as the call is over, be kidnapped and held in the basement).

The musty romcom trope of a man racing to the station or airport to stop his beloved leaving, for instance, has disappeared now he can simply ring or text her; and few recent thrillers or whodunnits come without scenes in which phones are destroyed, mislaid, stolen or read “no signal”, testifying to their ability to render standard plot devices unusable. —Guardian.