Good luck with computers
A confession on Radio 4
Radio 4’s excellent Sunday morning programme Broadcasting House heard that I was soon to leave the BBC and asked me to write an essay reflecting on my career as a technology correspondent. (You can listen to it here, along with Paddy O’Connell’s outrageous description of me as both “avuncular” and “old”.)
I decided to use this opportunity to make a confession - not only did I come late to computers, growing up in the decade before the ZX Spectrum or the BBC Micro gave millions their first taste of coding, but when first asked to work with them I immediately went out on strike.
Everything changed for me in 1995 when, with money left by a relative, I splashed out around £2000 on our first proper home computer, a Macintosh Performa 630, along with a printer and a modem. (We’d had an Amstrad PCW 9512 word processor but that was just a glorified typewriter.) When I turned the Mac on with the family gathered round we gasped with delight as it played a welcome animation - in colour!
Then I managed to understand after a number of false starts how the modem worked and somehow we were on the internet. This time, there was an even greater sense of wonder as a painting from the Louvre, which was early to have a website, animated ever so slowly line by line onto the screen.
1995 was also the year I interviewed Bill Gates for the first time, and he wrote in my copy of his book The Road Ahead - “Rory, Good luck with computers.” Well, after an early false start it seems to be going ok - especially since the smartphone era began, with me “in the room where it happened” as Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone.
Which, of course, is where I say you can learn far more about that and other adventures with technology in Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era.
Among the many places you can buy it is the Wanstead Book Shop, an online book store with a local vibe. I learned about it a few days ago when I spoke at the Wanstead Fringe, the latest stop in my very enjoyable tour of the UK’s book festivals, where I found a very engaged and responsive audience and sold quite a few copies of Always On.
My next in-person event is on September 25th at the Wigtown Book Festival in the Scottish borders. You can also catch me via Zoom at 3pm on Monday 20th September at an event hosted by Mishcon de Reya.
Always On is available as a hardback, ebook or audiobook here.
And if you want to support your local independent book shop you can order it at Hive.