Always on Hope and fear in the social smartphone era

Rory Cellan-Jones

Book - 2021

The principal technology correspondent for the BBC recounts the history of the smartphone and discusses its impact on the way this powerful technology ushered in a revolution in the way people live and work, including its dark side.

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Subjects
Published
London ; New York : Bloomsbury Continuum 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Rory Cellan-Jones (author)
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
295 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9781472981196
9781472992277
  • Prologue
  • Part I. Revolutionary times. 'We're going to make some history here today'
  • The smartphone revolution
  • Facepack: the rise of social media
  • Raspberry Pi: can Britain build a computer?
  • The end of the human race?
  • Elon Musk and the triumph of tech
  • Part II. Things fall apart. The woes of the web
  • Always on
  • Spinners, hacks and Hype
  • Crypto craziness
  • Part III. Tech in a global health crisis. The pandemic arrives
  • The app that could tame COVID
  • Fake news, 5G and the virus.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

BBC tech correspondent Cellan-Jones (Dot.Bomb) chronicles humans' increasingly personal relationship with technology in this insightful history. With the release of the first iPhone in 2007 and the rise of social media, he writes, tech companies have ushered in "a new age: the social smartphone era," in which people's expectations of social technology have vacillated between hope and fear. He argues that the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, which featured in a montage World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee sending out a tweet that read "This is for everyone," marked "the high point of our optimism about what the Web, smartphones and social media could do for us." But the revelation that Facebook had sold data from 50 million user profiles to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in 2016 was a turning point when "the world fell out of love not just with Facebook, but with the whole idea that the smartphone and social media were making our lives better." Cellan-Jones is skilled at charting the quickly changing tech landscape, though he's less successful at adding a personal element in the form of his search for tech-based treatments for his Parkinson's. Still, his robust, matter-of-fact reporting will appeal to readers interested in the highs and lows of tech's promises. (July)

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