However well-connected it makes us, cyberspace is lonely. That’s why, more and more, we are looking for live experiences

Meeting this week in the south of France is the giant Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. It is a fancy title for the marketing world’s Mad Men on sea. Rumour has it that half the world’s annual ad revenue is negotiated on its yachts and in its hotels and bars. It thus joins the Cannes film festival, the Frankfurt book fair, cancer research in Chicago and arms fairs everywhere as geographical fixed points in the post-digital world.

Meanwhile, the stars of vlogging and blogging are scheduled to gather at the Skip festival – held not on some virtual cloud but in London’s O2 arena. This is found by a search engine no faster than a Jubilee Line train. Is this the shock of the new?

Related: Can't stand Kanye West? Glastonbury offers an abundance of alternatives

A row of outdated futurology books on my shelf forecast the death of the workplace, the neighbourhood and the city

I was not alone in once dismissing the digital revolution as a passing craze