DEPENDING on which story you read online (ironic really!) the Worldwide Web was invented in the early 1990s.

I do remember saying at the time: “Well it will be great for education and research, but I really can’t ever see it being used as a sales tool!”

And so Clinton Rogers writing about IT might seem somehow fatuous.

But I’m minded to write this for two reasons. Firstly, whatever anyone tells me, I’m convinced our mobile phones are listening to us.

If that isn’t true, why did I get a completely unsolicited Facebook post about Battersea Power Station less than two hours after I pointed it out to my wife while we were on a Thames River cruise? 

That can’t be coincidence can it? And it made me think: is technology a boon or a bane?

Here’s another Rogers family IT story. My wife and I were at Alicante airport recently when out of the blue my wife got a call from someone speaking Spanish (we couldn’t understand them!), followed by two attempts from our daughter to call.

Then five minutes later, another Spanish call, this time from someone speaking English.

This was the Spanish ambulance service who, unbelievably, had been alerted by my wife’s Apple watch that she’d had a fall and was motionless.

Our daughter, as one of my wife’s emergency contacts, had received a similar text alert.

We can only assume that what happened was the watch had gone into “emergency mode” having been dropped on to the conveyer belt as we went through airport security.

So was that a good thing or a bad thing? A false alarm which worried our daughter for a while, but we concluded what a fantastic device to be watching over you.

Yet I’m still not sure technology is more boon than bane.

We have a generation growing up hardly talking to their parents – too busy chatting online with friends, or worse still, being bullied by them.

AI is taking over the world. And online shopping is killing our High Streets.

But the hare is out and running – too late to catch it now. What are your thoughts?

If you wish to contact Clinton, you can email him at clinton.rogers@countygazette.co.uk