Showing results by author "Rory Cellan-Jones" in All Categories

In January 2022, the Cellan-Jones-Coyle family said goodbye to their beloved elderly Collie cross, Cabbage. She and Rory had become inseparable during daily pandemic walks, which alleviated his Parkinson’s symptoms. After a grief-stricken year, Rory and his wife Diane come across a listing for ‘a kind girl who loves everybody and is just looking for her forever home’.

Always On immerses the listener in the most important story of our times - the dramatic impact of hyperconnectivity, the smartphone and social media on everything from our democracy to our employment and our health. The final section of the book draws on the author’s own personal experience with technology and medicine, considering how COVID-19 made us look again to computing in our battle to confront the greatest challenge of modern times.

Rory Cellan-Jones traces the roots of social networking from the counterculture of the 1970s through early bulletin board systems such as California's The Well and the first networks on the World Wide Web, finding out how a geeky hobby became a mass phenomenon. He discovers how Facebook became the world's biggest social network, looks at the sites of the future and asks where the phenomenon is heading.