Hands up, I’m a bit of a gadget geek. I am typing these words on an iPad in The Dorset in Brighton’s North Laine on a sunny Bank Holiday.

While tourists and residents alike enjoy a stroll through the quirky street I have my face down staring at a screen. But even I balk at the latest innovation hailed by the digerati – the Internet of Place.

According to the blurb put out by Brighton's Digital Catapult Centre (no, me neither): “The Digital Catapult Centre Brighton will focus specifically on projects that encourage innovation and value from real-time and location-based data – known as the Internet of Place. An additional £4m of inward investment has been created as a result of this new project.”

This idea follows on the heels of the Internet of Things – your umbrella tells you it’s going to rain, your fridge tells you to buy more eggs, that sort of thing. The Internet of Place takes this a step further and allows shopkeepers, for instance, to target your smartphone with ‘helpful’ messages. So I would not have had to find the Dorset under my own steam – as I approached Bond Street my phone would have piped up “Like food? There’s a pub down the road that does baguettes.”

Handy. Despite the amped up promises of social media gurus, all technology treats us as passive consumers. It’s time we turned the table.

The experts need to stop telling us what the technology is for and start asking us how we would like it to serve us. The digital future is too important to leave it to the digerati.

Now excuse me I have to order my lunch – via a real human being.

John Keenan is a journalist