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Are these people on the bus incapable of experiencing the world without deliberately cutting themselves off from it, in the form of electronic comfort blankets? What are they afraid of if their favourite music, photographs, contact lists, videos and computer games are not continually available? Although I have an intense interest in computers and have made my living producing computerised entertainments, it is people and places that interest me more. Anyway, if computers were more miraculous than people, they would have invented us, not the other way round. For several of my fellow travellers, perhaps that is exactly what has happened, and they are no more than the sum of all that computerised flim-flam stuffed

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in their pockets and bum bags.

Over the hill

Back in Marrakech, the tech-toys belonging to other people do not feel as intrusive as before, and I hope all those plugged-in folk on the bumpy bus have a safe onward journey to wherever it is they are heading. I manage to check all the emails in my inbox that have accumulated since I last logged on, and I am satisfied that the spam has been frittered and the junk has been dumped. I even allow myself to have a good laugh at some banal photos beamed to me by far-flung family and friends.

I pay the fat bloke with the orange-stained teeth who has a sideline in snake-charming. There's not a lot of money in snake-charming these days. Instead, he makes his real money from computer users like me, which is why he runs this internet café. Sordid little huts like his, with their impossible internet connections, allow me to submit this month's Rants & Raves right now, right here, from the gigantic square that is Djemaa el-Fna, which is probably the greatest outdoor spectacle in the world.

Forget my rants and forgive my grouchiness. This is really a rave. I actually love what technology allows me to do. I love computers, I love the web and I even love the foibles of my fellow geeks. All is forgiven. As-Salamu Alaykum.