So this press release arrives. Remove your hats if you are wearing them. Clasp your hands. Bow your heads. Apparently the autograph is dead.

"New research out from HTC reveals that one in three (31%) football fans want to leave the stadium after match day with a selfie with a footballer - the holy grail of digital memorabilia - in contrast with a decade ago where signed autographs, printed ticket stubs and match day programmes topped football fans' 'must-have' league of memorabilia."

This is the key finding in a Digital Memorabilia Report - commissioned by the company which describes itself as a "global leader in mobile innovation" - to investigate how technology has changed the way football fans collect, store and share their mementos.

The responses of 4,000 football followers throughout Europe indicate that, for 64 per cent of those questioned, the matchday experience isn't complete without smartphone pictures which can be rapidly shared on social media.

The ultimate memento for football fans - a selfie with a star. One young woman grabs the goods here with Neymar during Brazil training in this year's World Cup finals, Funny how it's always the taker who smiles ©Getty Images

Once that mandatory selfie has been secured, 76 per cent of fans hasten to share it, with 20 per cent employing Twitter and 60 per cent placing digital mementos on Facebook/Instagram.

This being football, there is of course a league table of desirable digitalia. A selfie with a football player is the longed-for item as far as 32 per cent of respondents are concerned. A photo of an unexpected moment during the match, such as a pitch invasion or an instance of sportsmanship, nets 15 per cent approval.

Selfies with friends celebrating a goal or in front of a club emblem score 12% per cent and nine per cent respectively, while a video selfie with a football player before a match - who on earth ever captures these? - registers eight per cent approval.

"Football memorabilia exists beyond the club shop, it's personal: Personal pictures, personal videos and personal keepsakes created by the fans themselves," observes the report authored by Jim Boulton, who revels in the title of Digital Archaeologist. ("My God! Unless my eyes deceive me, I think what we have here is a Nokia 2310!")

Ancient mobile phones such as a Digital Archaeologist might covet. Some date back to 1998!! ©Getty Images

But it is the technology, not the impulse, that is new.

What people are now doing at any huge gathering, whether it is an Olympics, a football match, a concert, is no more than a more fully enabled version of what people have always done through photography. "This is us next to the Eiffel Tower...and there's me on the Champs Elysees..."

The tourist impulse is in all of us as we pin ourselves to things greater, older, grander than ourselves like so many mounted butterflies. The impulse goes back much further though - to the first self portraits, or, more in the selfie-alongside-centre-of-attention mode, to painters such as Jan van Eyck, who popped in a cheeky image of himself in his Amolfini portrait of 1434, reflected in a mirror behind the two main figures. Or, in more recent years, the fleeting cameos of Alfred Hitchcock in his own films.

A detail from Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait of 1434 - one of the two figures in the mirror - the one in red - is reckoned to be the artist himself. An early selfie then.And there's an early Kilroy too - the inscription above the mirror reads, in Latin obviously, "Jan Van Eyck Was Here 1434"  ©DeAgostini/Getty Images

To use a little more digital terminology, we have this urge to become attachments, binding ourselves to events and historic artefacts.

Skipping back into the realm of football, I was browsing through videos of the 50 memorable FA Cup goals most obligingly collected recently by BBC Sport. Goal number 50 was Ricky Villa's glorious slalom run through the Manchester City defence en route to scoring the winner for Spurs in the 1981 replayed final.

The clip included footage of Tottenham's ludicrously youthful captain, Steve Perryman, collecting the Cup - and being joined within seconds by a young Spurs fan in a cap. The fan hugs his captain for several seconds before retreating behind the camera with the words "Sorry...sorry". He doesn't look sorry. He looks very, very happy.

As well he might, for this young man has achieved the perfect selfie a quarter of a century before the Age of the Selfie.

Tottenham Hotspur captain Steve Perryman brandishes the FA Cup in 1981. Somewhere close, a young fan awaits the moment to join him in the limelight ©Getty Images

But why bother? Why this need to obtrude oneself into the heart of the action?

I'm sure our Digital Archaelogist didn't include this question in his poll: "Would you rather get a selfie with your favourite player than see your team win?" I bet that some football followers, honestly, would say yes. Always another match...

Another question that wouldn't have been asked: "Is it more important to enjoy yourself, or to be seen to be enjoying yourself?" The digital age has enabled all of us to be the stars of our own imaginary films, with life as a soundtrack.

But why bother?

Relatedness Need Satisfaction. Back in 1953, getting the signature of Stanley Matthews was sufficient to assuage this ©Getty Images

Psychologists, naturally enough, have been all over this question.

"The negative view of the selfie is as a narcissistic or cynical manoeuvre," says Dr Andrew Przybylski, a psychologist at the Oxford Internet Institute. "You take a picture of yourself in a place in order to enhance the esteem you earn from others in some way, to have a positive experience rub off and impress an imagined audience."

Przybylski goes on to say that this activity "feeds into one of the deepest, most fundamental aspects of human nature, something called Relatedness Need Satisfaction - the need to belong."

So is this what it all comes down to?

No man is an island, as Jon Bon Jovi did sing. We're all one big tectonic plate now, for better or worse. Whoopee.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.