Looking back, looking forward
Old dog, new tricks
The Always On world tour continues - so far it has taken in book festivals in Folkestone, Dartington, Chiswick, Wanstead and Wigtown, podcasts ranging from Hidden Forces to Better Known, and on Monday it took me to the Malvern Festival of Innovation.
It was a hugely enjoyable event in front of an audience which had come out on a wet Monday evening and seemed determined to enjoy themselves. Adrian Burden, a technology entrepreneur who has been the moving spirit behind this festival for a decade, had compiled what felt like a This is Your Life collection of video clips to steer our conversation through the themes of the book.
They included Steve Jobs’ mesmerising performance as he unveiled the iPhone in 2007, my viral video with David Braben showing off the Raspberry Pi prototype, the interview where Blackberry boss Mike Lazaridis demanded we turn off the camera, and my 2016 interview with Elon Musk.
But the clip which proved most engaging both to the audience and to me was a poorly shot video with terrible audio from 2008 where I demanded that Steve Jobs upgraded the iPhone to make it more of an all-purpose device.
The clip is a reminder of how primitive the first iPhone was - no 3G, no video capture, and you could not even copy and paste. But it also shows how I revelled in the freedom that technology was giving me and others to express ourselves. Instead of needing a camera crew and a commission from an editor, I could tell a story, post it to my YouTube story and reach a global audience.
And quite soon the quality of such videos (I think this one may have been recorded on a laptop’s webcam) improved hugely, as smartphone cameras became sophisticated enough to be used by Hollywood filmmakers.
Within a few months, the iPhone 3GS came out, fulfilling all my demands for improved features, though I am not entirely sure my video message did the trick.
As my event got underway, the catastrophic breakdown of Facebook’s services was entering its second hour - not so much Always On as Completely Off. On Tuesday morning I drove home from Malvern and found myself doing a quick TV piece for the One’o’Clock News about the story.
This included a piece to camera I shot using my smartphone propped up on a tripod on my desk - the framing provided evidence of why professional camera crews are still needed.
But, in the final month of my BBC career, I also got the chance to try something new, a BBC Sounds podcast called 5 Minutes On. The idea is that you tell a story in five minutes, in my case what went wrong at Facebook and why it matters.
In collaboration with excellent producers Laura Barrow and Anthony Zahra, I interviewed my favourite tech pundit Kate Bevan, used Twitter to track down a Christmas tree business which had seen traffic to its website halve during the outage, and unearthed from my archive a 2007 Today Programme report on social networking where John Humphrys talked of this new thing called Facepack.
Have a listen - I think you’ll enjoy it. This old dog may be looking back rather a lot at the moment but is also looking forward to learning a few new tricks.
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.