Swipe for reflection | August – have a break: feast on words

Part summer reading list, part reflection on technology and attention, Conny Dorrestijn Prins shares the books accompanying her August, and why reading remains one of the most meaningful ways to slow down, think deeply and reconnect with ideas.

August has always struck me as a rather civilised invention, apart from the fact I was born in this month and so had much trouble every year to drum up enough kids for my birthday party. For a few precious weeks we persuade ourselves that life can proceed at a gentler pace. Diaries empty, out-of-office replies appear, families scatter towards beaches, mountains or, in my case this year, simply towards home. We promise ourselves long lunches, conversations that are allowed to wander and mornings that begin at a luxurious slow pace.

Whether we keep that promise is another matter.

The phone usually makes the journey with us and, perhaps too readily, we blame it for our inability to switch off. But that seems rather unfair. The phone is not the culprit, nor, for that matter, is artificial intelligence. Technology has no agency of its own. It simply offers us possibilities. The choices remain ours.

That thought has stayed with me because it reveals one of the great paradoxes of our age. Over the past three decades, technology has given us more authority over our lives than any previous generation could have imagined. We can work from almost anywhere, build companies from our kitchen tables, learn from the world's finest universities, access libraries that once belonged only to scholars and collaborate effortlessly across continents. Information, opportunity and possibility have become astonishingly democratic.

Yet, at precisely the moment technology has handed us unprecedented freedom, many of us have quietly surrendered autonomy and even authority over the one thing that has always been entirely our own: our attention.

Nobody forces us to interrupt dinner to glance at a notification. Nobody compels us to skim another headline or scroll through another reel before breakfast. Those are choices. Small choices, repeated often enough that they become habits, and habits, as Aristotle observed, have a curious tendency to become character.

As artificial intelligence reshapes what we can do, Conny Dorrestijn Prins explores a more enduring question: not what technology is capable of, but what kind of attention, wisdom, and curiosity we choose to cultivate.

As our industry debates the implications of artificial intelligence, I increasingly wonder whether we are asking only half the question. We devote endless hours to discussing what machines will soon be capable of, while spending rather less time reflecting on what should continue to distinguish us. If technology continues to expand our capabilities, what do we choose to do with that gift? How do we become wiser rather than merely faster?

Perhaps that is why books matter more than ever.

Not because they compete with technology—they don't—nor because reading is somehow morally superior to watching a documentary or listening to a podcast. Books simply ask something our digital lives rarely do: sustained attention. They ask us to remain with an idea long enough for it to challenge us, contradict us and, every now and then, change our views or sometimes even bits about ourselves.

So this year, staying at home, the agenda is light: work on my cookbook and read the pile of books on my bedside table. To wander, to explore, to learn and to nourish my curiosity.

1. Apple in China – Patrick McGee
   Because if technology is shaping our future, I want to understand not only the products I admire but also the geopolitical, economic and human context and a country I honestly know (too) little about.
2. Viktor – Judith Fanto 
   A wonderful gentle read and mind trip into twentieth-century Europe, identity and the resilience of a family shaped by extraordinary events.
3. The Safekeep – Yael van der Wouden (in truth already finished but such a wonderful debut by this Dutch writer in English)
   Fascinating and surprising how history has a habit of lingering in the walls of a house and in the silences between generations. Tough start, super surprising finish!
4. I Regret Almost Everything – Keith McNally
   Because it is superbly witty, refreshingly honest and full of the sort of wisdom that only emerges from his life lived so boldly, imperfectly and with a healthy dose of self-awareness.
5.  The Gold Standard: An Alternative Economic History of the Twentieth Century – Saifedean Ammous
   Every now and then it is healthy to read a book that challenges accepted history, the what if… we lived in a world of a free-market gold standard that lasted for the entire 20th century?

There is one final reason I treasure books during the holidays, get engaged! Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has rightly encouraged us to think harder about screens, but perhaps the richer response is not simply to remove devices from the table but to replace them with stories, ideas, and questions. Read with your children. Let them pick a book to jointly read and disagree about a character over dinner. Ask what surprised them. Listen carefully to the answer. The best books never really end when the final page is turned; they continue in the conversations that follow, now and once you again return to work.

PS – I’d love to learn your must-reads and hear your view on mine.

About the author

Conny Dorrestijn Prins has over 30 years' experience in innovation and financial services, specialising in payments, banking infrastructure and fintech. She is Non-Executive Director at Singer Capital Markets, Chair of its Remuneration Committee, and a Member of the Supervisory Board of Worldpay (NL entity). She served as a Non-Executive Director of Augmentum Fintech plc from 2021 to 2026, until its acquisition by Verdane.

Conny combines operational leadership – including the growth and sale of Clear2Pay to FIS – with extensive board experience across listed and private companies. She is a Founding Partner and shareholder of BankiFi, advises founders and investors through ABN AMRO Techstars, is a founding angel investor in Arches Capital, and serves on the Advisory Board of Guzco.ai.

She is an ambassador for the European Women in Payments Network and supports initiatives that empower young people, including the Global Give Back Circle in Kenya. Conny brings an independent, commercially grounded perspective to organisations navigating growth, transformation and innovation, with a particular focus on technology, AI and their impact on business and society.