Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era

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. [em](July) [/em]