For several years I didn’t wear a watch. I was one of those folk who simply glanced at their mobile phone or the nearest wall clock whenever they needed to know the time.

Then I took up running and got a smartwatch to record distance and pace. I only intended to wear it on runs. At some point, though, I clicked that it also tallied my daily step count, whether I was running or not. And down the rabbit hole I tumbled.

Fast forward 18 months and I now find myself in a slavish relationship with my smartwatch. And it is bordering on obsessive.

It has become a permanent fixture on my wrist. Partly because I have such a pronounced runner’s tan that, even when I’m not wearing a watch, it looks like I am. But mostly because having a gap in its all-seeing analysis gives me serious existential dread.

Several times a day, I will scroll through the myriad settings to check my resting heart rate or peruse the body battery score, which tracks ongoing energy levels.

There is performance data including VO2 max (an indicator of aerobic fitness) and predicted race times (how fast you should be able to run over a set distance). I pore over any fluctuations like a SpaceX Starship engineer calculating a crucial payload.

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Yep, I’m fully aware that this bears all the hallmarks of someone who has lost the plot. Nor am I alone in this plight. There are a raft of internet memes about the love-hate relationship many people have with their smartwatches.

The general consensus is that it feels akin to toting a judgemental calculator, authoritarian former Eastern Bloc sports coach, helicopter parent and Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation around everywhere you go.

The sci-fi trope “the machines are coming” used to bring to mind merciless robot soldiers hellbent on destroying human civilisation and colonising Earth. The takeover has been far stealthier than that. They don’t walk among us, but they do live rent-free in our heads.

It is those spirit-crushing moments when you think you have smashed a workout, only for your watch to go, “meh”. I have nicknamed mine Shania Twain because it seems, no matter what I do, it’s like “that don’t impress me much”. Yet, I endlessly crave its approval.

It will beep to tell me to move if it thinks I’ve been sedentary too long. Never mind that I’d already ran eight miles and now having a relaxing soak in the bath or enjoying a Netflix binge with a bowl of cheesy Wotsits in my lap.

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And don’t expect any sympathy if you aren’t feeling in tip-top form. One such indignity, while laid low with a cold for almost a fortnight, was seeing my training status tumble from “productive” to “recovery” and, finally, “detraining”. To be fair, the last one was a powerful motivator that had me rising like Lazarus from my sickbed.

There are days it seems as if I communicate with machines more than humans. As I write this, the washing machine is beeping to say a cycle is finished, my watch is beeping to tell me to get off my backside and my mobile phone is beeping with a slew of incoming text messages.

An endless cacophony of electronic chimes. All these gadgets are meant to make our lives easier, but sometimes it feels like a flashback to the late 1990s and early 2000s when Tamagotchis - tiny digital “pets” constantly greedy for attention - were all the rage.

The line between helpful and hindrance appears increasingly blurred. The machines are here. And if we’re lucky, at this rate, they might keep us as Tamagotchi-style pets.