Can’t read a map or add up? Don’t worry, we’ve always let technology do the boring stuff | Martha Gill

We won't fear the rise of the robots when we realise they're just another tool to take the tedium out of our lives

The dystopian novels of the last century were mostly filled with terrifying visions of the rise of technology - a genre of which we are still to tire. Charlie Brooker's hugely successful Black Mirror series in which technology kills, maims or subjects people to terrible fates will have a seventh incarnation this year.

But just for balance, just for once, I'd like to see a dystopia in which humans of the 2020s are catapulted into a world equipped only with the technology of a few decades ago. The repetitive domestic chore. The mind-numbing assembly-line job. The tyranny of a thousand paper forms to fill out by hand, post and file.