Gadgets to God - Reflections on our Changing Relationship with Technology: How we went from Using Machines to Machines Using Us

by Mr David Wortley FRSA

Written in 2011. Every prediction has come true. In 2011, David Wortley sat down and wrote a quiet warning. He described how social media would hijack our attention, how algorithms would begin making decisions for us, how our dependency on digital technology was deepening in ways most people had not yet noticed. He called it the "boiling frog" effect — we were changing so gradually, so comfortably, that we would not realise what we had lost until it was too late. That book is this one. And it reads, in 2026, like prophecy. Gadgets to God is an autobiographical journey through more than fifty years of technological change, told by someone who lived every chapter of it. Born in post-war Lincolnshire into a home without a telephone, a television, or a car, David Wortley grew up to witness — and shape — every major technological revolution of the modern era: steam trains, radio, television, the personal computer, the internet, video games, virtual worlds, social media, and now artificial intelligence. Each of the ten chapters is devoted to a technology type, arranged chronologically and told through true personal stories. The result is something rare: a memoir that is also a provocation, a love letter to human ingenuity that is also a serious warning about where we are headed. Central argument : we have fundamentally shifted from humans using machines to machines using humans. *"Where once we were masters, we may now become slaves."* Written for both Digital Natives who have never known a world without the internet, and Digital Immigrants who lived through the transition and may feel, quietly, that something has been lost. If you have ever wondered how we got here — and what it means — this book was written for you. Then. And even more urgently, now. Available on Kindle. Physical edition arriving August 2026. Read more