I got the idea for the book when I was teaching English to international students at a language school in southern England. I noticed that in the breaks between the lessons, the students preferred to look at their smartphones rather than to speak to each other.
This fascinated me. What was it about a smartphone, admittedly with some very sophisticated software, that could possibly be more interesting than talking to the person sitting next to them? I used to see whole groups of students, sitting silently, intently staring at their smartphones, when there was a real live sentient human being sitting next to them, with whom they could have had a conversation.
The same thing was happening in the staffroom. A room full of teachers – many of them with degrees and years of experience – who would prefer to look at their smartphones in the breaks, rather than have a conversation with their colleagues. Something significant was happening here – but what?
Obviously whatever they were looking at on their smartphones was more interesting than any possible conversation they might have – but it went a lot deeper than that. It was obvious there was a profound process at work here, that a mixture of smart software and technology had evolved, which could mould itself to the interests and tastes of nearly anyone, whatever the tastes of that person might be.
If you think about it for a moment, that is quite remarkable: that software can now analyse your browsing history, and offer you something similar, something tantalising, that you might click on and watch – something more interesting than talking to your friends or neighbours.
Nor has this process reached its end-point. It is almost certain that in the future our technology and the software powering it will result in even more options, even more possibilities to step into a virtual world, and so not talk to our fellows and contemporaries.
These are remarkable triumphs, which have all happened in the last 15 years or so. (The first Apple smartphone was only released in 2007.) Where then might the future lie, with all this happening so quickly?
It seems obvious that this remarkable ability of technology to mould itself to our wants and needs, to predict what we might find interesting, will only continue. Our technology, our software, will continue to somehow figure us out, figure out what we like and what we don't, our wants and our likes, until it has pretty much figured out what it means to be a human being at all.
It is possible that our software may reach the point at which it is possible to converse with us, as a human would. Conversational software is already available, albeit in a very simple form; but if the gains of the last few years are anything to go by, it might not be that long before we are conversing with our smartphones all the time.
Obviously, this brings with it significant dangers and challenges, but it certainly doesn't look impossible. It might also offer benefits – particularly to those who live alone, who might be prone to isolation.
Another thing which struck me about all this was the degree to which no one person was in charge of all this, this remarkable growth and development. No one had commanded all this to be so; that all this technology would appear – it had simply happened. Incredibly creative forces were at work here, which had built hardware and software of unbelievable flexibility and sophistication; and yet no one was in charge of the overall process at all.
It seemed to me that this was one of the most remarkable aspects of this whole business, that all this had come about on its own; that a combination of technology, human creativity and the capital to fund it had created all this, without it actually being planned in advance at all.
This flowering, this spontaneous outpouring and advance of technology, had come out of relatively modest roots. But given the right circumstances it had resulted in astonishing products, perhaps none more so than the smartphone itself. (Little wonder then that I put the smartphone, the key to all the world's knowledge (via the internet) at the front and centre of my book.)
But back to that process of the development of technology, and the fact that nobody was actually in charge. Admittedly, different people, at different giant tech corporations in the USA were making huge individual contributions, like Steve Jobs for example, who launched the first i-phone.
But even Steve Jobs was not really in charge. Neither was Bill Gates, or Elon Musk, or any of the other Silicon Valley tech titans; for each of them was simply trying to keep up, to bring out newer smarter products, in a never-ending race to stay on top. They were more like competitors in a Darwinian race where you had to keep moving, where to stand still was death, and only further development could save you.
So if the individuals – or even the different tech corporations – were not in charge of this process, this astonishing evolution of technology, who was? And it seemed to me the answer was no one – and that's when I knew I had to write this book.
It seemed to me that this process, the incredible outpouring of ever-better products had no one in charge of it, because it was in charge of itself. In other words it had its own momentum, its own dynamic, its own inner force propelling it along. It was true that mankind was doing the inventing, the research, the manufacturing and the marketing, but actually mankind was more like a tool in all this, an unwitting sap in a wider process over which it had no control, and no real idea how it was all going to end.
It seemed to me that it was as if mankind was riding a locomotive – a locomotive that was forever gathering momentum – on a journey to an unknown destination. Admittedly it was mankind that had built the locomotive, had improved it and and made it go faster and faster, but mankind had no control over where that locomotive was actually headed.
Neither of course would it be possible to stop all this development, this evolution of things. Another fascinating thing about this whole process – which is occurring all around us – is that it cannot be stopped. No man, no matter how great, has a giant 'stop' button, to bring a halt to all this. Mankind is in for the whole ride, has signed up for the final destination, despite not knowing where that final destination might be.
Will mankind's future be a happy one? Will technology produce a world of plenty and freedom for all? Or will it all go wrong, and we will be silently suffocated by our robots?
The truth is of course impossible to tell. We can hazard guesses, try to control the forward march of technology at least a little, to ward off its most dangerous excesses. But of one thing we can be sure – that change is coming, and it is coming very quickly, and it will produce a future which is very different from the past.