New Delhi, April 19 -- A few weeks ago, I was obsessively checking my phone, hoping to see a notification from Google Docs. I had shared a piece with my editor and wanted to hear her thoughts. A day passed. Then two. Nothing.

A few days later, while opening the doc for something else, I noticed she'd already made comments and edits-all sitting there silently. I just never got the notification.

After a little digging, I discovered I now had to manually enable notifications to be alerted if someone made changes to my document-a setting I didn't remember touching. I had been getting updates smoothly for years. So, who was at fault? The app or the device?

This, I've since realised, is our new normal. Our phones are constantly buzzing-someo...