Rory Cellan-Jones, one of the most renowned journalists in the field of technology, reveals the secrets, anecdotes and implications of the digital age in this extract from the first chapter of his book ‘Always ON’, published by Pinolia.
Technology has radically changed our lives in recent decades. From the invention of the smartphone, which has given us access to unprecedented computing power and connectivity, to the rise of social media, which has transformed the way we communicate, inform and entertain ourselves, we live in an age of hyperconnectivity that offers us great opportunities but also great challenges .
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What has this process of technological revolution been like?
Table of Contents
1.What consequences has it had for society, the economy, politics and culture? 2.What can we expect from the future? These are some of the questions raised by Rory Cellan-Jones , a BBC journalist specialising in technology for 40 years, in his book ‘ Always ON: A personal chronicle of the rise, consequences and present of the technological revolution ‘, recently published by Pinolia .
In this book
the author offers us a first-person account of key moments in the history of technology, from the appearance of Apple’s iPhone , which revolutionised the mobile phone market, to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed the risks of manipulating personal data; through to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of fake news . Through his experiences and interviews with the protagonists of this era, such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk , Tim Berners-Lee or Mark Zuckerberg, Cellan-Jones shows us how technology has affected all areas of our lives, from our democracy to our employment and our health.
The book is a personal chronicle
but also a critical reflection on the impact of technology on society. The author does not limit himself to narrating the facts, but also analyses and evaluates them, showing both the positive and negative aspects of the technological revolution. Thus, he presents us with a balanced and nuanced vision, which recognises the benefits of technology, but also its risks and limitations.
‘ Always ON ‘
is an essential book to understand the present and future of technology , and to reflect on the role we want it to have in our lives. If you are interested in this topic, do not miss the opportunity to read an extract from the first chapter of the book, which we offer exclusively below.
«Today we are going to make history»
It was 11 a.m. on a bright January morning in 2007 as I jogged the short distance from San Francisco’s Moscone Centre to my hotel, laden with precious videotapes of a historic event. That meant it was 7 p.m. in London and I had three hours to file my story for the Ten O’Clock News . Well, not really. Since we were using a new and relatively untested way of delivering this story, my cameraman and I had set a deadline of 9 p.m. London time to begin feeding our edited package.
My phone rang, I think it was a Nokia N95, very modern at the time. It was a producer from the London office, and as far as I can remember it was the first time his voice had sounded enthusiastic about a technology story. “We’ve seen the pictures, it looks incredible! You have to have that phone in your hand to get the piece on camera. YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE PHONE!”
I snorted. As usual, London was demanding the impossible.
A couple of hours earlier, Steve Jobs had stood on stage and told an excited crowd that he was going to unveil three things: a music player, an Internet device and a phone. When he revealed that they were all contained in the same device, hysteria broke out.
Apple had a reputation for being the most controlling company in the world, obsessed with secrecy and with getting information about its new products out in a timely manner and on its own terms. The new phone wouldn’t go on sale in the United States until June, and for months, no journalist would be able to get access to the new device. So getting one of these devices just hours after its unveiling seemed highly unlikely. But if I didn’t get this key shot, Ten O’Clock News would be in for a rude awakening, and the editor might even stop airing a story that was already way down the newsfeed. On the other hand, if I ran back to the conference room and tried to get my hands on the precious iPhone, I might end up losing my slot, the most serious crime a television reporter can commit.
So I stood on the street, weighing my options and remembering how I had ended up in San Francisco.
A few months earlier
after nearly twenty years of business reporting for the BBC, my bosses had suggested a new title – technology correspondent – to reflect the fact that many of the stories I covered concerned the impact of the internet on business and society. I was pleased, but somewhat wary, with this new role: it didn’t seem to involve any pay rise, and I was concerned about the company’s commitment to the new role. In March 2000, the BBC had decided to appoint me internet correspondent, as many of the stories I covered revolved around the dotcom bubble. At that time, a young entrepreneurial couple with a business project – an online light bulb shop, a beauty treatment website, for example – could always find backers willing to invest millions without asking too many questions about their experience or the expected timeframe for the business to be profitable. My wife, who is an economist, joked that my appointment was a sell signal, and she was right. The bubble burst, the dotcoms collapsed, and the BBC decided I should go back to being a business correspondent. “The Internet is over,” said one of my bosses.
A year later I managed to publish a book about the history of the UK’s brief internet bubble, but since it came out on 9 September 2001, hardly anyone cared because a much bigger story would soon take over.
Still
between covering Marks and Spencer’s results and the monthly inflation figures, I managed to squeeze in a few stories about technology. I travelled to South Korea to show Six O’Clock News viewers three stories from that hyper-connected nation that seemed to offer a glimpse of the future. We filmed participants in Cyworld, a social network that allowed its users – and that meant almost all young adults – to create their own idealised world. We visited gaming cafes, where haggard young men seemed to spend all their waking hours. Indeed, one gamer was found dead in one such establishment. And we covered a citizen journalism project that we told viewers (somewhat naively) would disempower the media giants in favour of ordinary people.
When Steve Jobs traveled to London to announce the opening of the iTunes Music Store, I was there to report on this brilliant event. I interviewed both Jobs and Alicia Keys, the star hired so that the launch was not covered only by the specialized press.
But when I returned to the newsroom
the editor of Six O’Clock News told me I had only one minute and forty-five seconds for my story. When I asked her how she expected the tech titan, the celebrity and an outside analyst to fit in, her answer was clear: “Leave Jobs alone.” That powerful editor has since gone on to have a glittering career, eventually rising to become the executive in charge of Apple TV’s European operation.
However, in 2007
the company seemed determined to expand its technology coverage. As a statement of intent, editor-in-chief Peter Horrocks decided to send a large team to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the big tech industry show held in Las Vegas every January. The idea was that from Breakfast to Newsnight we would show our audience key product launches and analyse emerging technology trends. It was a huge and expensive task. Our team of twenty people occupied a trailer outside the Las Vegas Convention Centre, and a mobile unit flew in from Los Angeles to relay the information to London.
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Still
I decided we needed to invest more money. One technology company had long ago made the decision that it didn’t need to rub shoulders with its peers in Las Vegas or any other sleazy trade show. Apple decides when and where to share its plans with its enthusiastic fans, and while all the world’s tech media was focused on the big show in Las Vegas, Jobs’s company called its diehard fans to San Francisco. It seemed an arrogant move. But Apple could afford to do so, because it knew it was the best in the tech world at the time. Ten years earlier, Steve Jobs had returned to the ailing company he’d been ousted from in 1987, determined to breathe new life into it. He quickly realized that a young Brit on the design team, Jonathan Ive, was his soul mate, and together they created a series of products that changed the way we think about computing. The iMac, with its retro yet futuristic design, proved that computers didn’t have to be boring beige boxes. The iPod became the Sony Walkman of the next generation, allowing you to carry your entire music library on a smart device, and listen to each song by clicking its clever click wheel. And with iTunes, the store where you could pay to download music, it showed that its ambitions extended beyond computing to the media industry, where it had the potential to force radical change.
Even in the bad times
Apple had always had a devoted army of disciples. Its customers considered themselves superior to the unthinking masses who bought Wintel computers (the amalgamation of Microsoft’s Windows operating system with Intel chips), which accounted for about 95 percent of the personal computing market in the late 1990s. Being a Mac user meant “thinking differently,” as one of the company’s marketing slogans went, appreciating good design and a new way of doing things, even if it meant paying a lot more. Now, although Apple was still worth only a quarter of Microsoft’s, its fan base had expanded, fueled by the latest rumors, spread on thousands of blogs, about what Apple’s Cupertino headquarters might create next. The company’s ironclad discipline in keeping everything related to product development secret (even among its different departments) only increased the passionate speculation.
