THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! went the music and WAH! WAH! WAH! went my baby daughter. A party a few doors down was getting out of hand. It was 1.15 in the morning and time to take action.

“Wimbledon police station?” I asked, after dialling the number in the phone book. “Well, we handle their calls,” a man answered, slightly mysteriously. (Great: a call centre, just what I needed.) But no, sorry, they didn’t deal with this sort of thing. Try the local authority and its environmental health department instead.

I did. I pressed “3” to opt for help, and was put through to a tired-sounding person on the night shift. “Let me take a few more details from you, and somebody will call you back,” he said. “Can’t you deal with this?” I whined. “That’s not how it works.”

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The great financial crisis intensified at ultra-high speed thanks to super-fast broadband connections and increased computer processing power. Time to switch the machines off? No. But it is surely time to manage the flow of information better.

This will not be easy. Research led by the husband-and-wife-team Professors Andrew and Nada Kakabadse (he is based at the Cranfield school of management, she is at the Northampton business school) has revealed the depths of managers’ addiction to new communication technology. Around a quarter of the 1,200 professionals surveyed spend three or more hours a day on their e-mails and sending text messages. More than half the younger and middle-aged respondents never turn their phones off at all.

Three quarters of younger workers admit to being addicted to technology. Alcohol, tobacco, shopping: none of these temptations matches the appeal of fancy new gadgets and high-tech kit. The only good news is that, while confessing to their addiction, the majority of respondents deny that their use of technology is out of control.

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