LAST Saturday I went into church to solemnise a wedding and found the best man prowling around the chancel carrying a digital recorder.

"'Ere mate," he asked in the phraseology used for addressing a clergyman these days "where do I stick this?" By the grace of God, I was able to tell him exactly where to stick it.

When the service actually started, there was a chorus of mobile phone ring-tones to compete with Here Comes the Bride. And ring-tones from the mobiles never stopped throughout - not even when I was warning the happy couple against carnal lusts and appetites.

I'm damned if I'm going to turn into one of those parsons with banana split smiles who gets up and patronises the congregation about what's allowed and what isn't. Such performances ruin any vestige of religious atmosphere.

This just shows that predictions of technological hell on earth tend to come true but not as originally expected. For example the sci-fi favourite of our being taken over by machines has come true, only there is no plague of flesh-mangling robots - just mobile phones.

Public events are not disrupted by daleks but by the migraine flash of digital cameras. And ubiquitous CCTV is not working for Big Brother but for the Czar of all London, Ken Livingstone, who employs them to secure his nice little earner the congestion charge. And of course under the guise of speed cameras these are fundraisers for the authorities countrywide

The mobile phone is not just a convenience toy for obsessive egomaniacs. It is the Great Dehumaniser because it makes conversation at a distance more important than conversation in the flesh. You'll see what I mean when next you're having an intimate talk with your friend and his mobile rings. He will then break off your heart-to-heart and say, "I'll just get this". It's not only the noise and the inanity. People on mobiles in the street lose all sense of direction and become a threat to life and limb.

Weddings are ruined by digital cameras - and there's no need for it nowadays when the official photographer can send his pictures electronically to anyone who wants them. When the bride and groom stand at the altar it's like the paparazzi at a movie premiere - and the beauty of holiness is slain in a thousand blinks.

Everywhere the damned machines emerge to torment us. I used to enjoy a chat with the girls behind the till in our local Tesco, but now they've installed these self-service checkouts and to operate them you need a degree in higher physics. Anyhow, I thought service industries were supposed to be about service. Why should we be expected to serve ourselves? The drinks machines on the train stations are a stiffer intellectual challenge than the prize crossword. I can never get them to deliver a black coffee without sugar - it's almost as if the machine disapproves of my choice. And whatever comes out does so with such gusto that the plastic cup invariably overturns and spills over your suitcase.

The terrifying significance of ubiquitous electronics is that artificial communication has completely subverted natural relationships. What happens mechanistically, electronically has become more important than what happens in the flesh. Human life is thus subverted. There used to be appearance and reality but now there is only appearance. There is no reality - only image. We have forgotten the commandment which forbids the making of images. God help us, the machines have taken over!

* Peter Mullen is Chaplain of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.