Around 1983, a movie came out called “Wargames.” It involved a teenager using his home computer setup to hack into NORAD, and set a war-gaming computer on a course to start world war III. It was funny, silly and dramatic. And it seemed to perfectly foreshadow the hacking culture that arose soon after. The young man had a computing rig laughable by today's standards. Large floppy disks, acoustic-coupler modem, a computer with perhaps 64K RAM, or 128K at the most. Dot-matrix impact printer. Using an auto-dialer program he scanned phone numbers one at a time, and found the one secret number to dial a giant computer called WOPR. And he nearly caused the destruction of the then-modern world. An amusing movie, but prescient nevertheless.

Fast-forward to the present time. Where one sits down at an always-on PC, intending to do one thing, and distractions steer him or her well away from the intended action. Where we are dependent on Internet technology for banking and bill paying, yet vulnerable to hackers not only here but from around the world. We can see the good, bad and horrific in rapid time. Where now we cannot escape from our human-made maze of complexity and ever-present risk.

There are times when I want to say, “Stop, I want off!” To escape this merry-go-round of Web bedazzlement and bill-paying necessity, and go back to the early 1970's. To go back to paper checks cashed at the supermarket, paper statements, even typewriters. To a time when computers were huge hulking iron things, locked away in secret rooms, surrounded by air-cooling vents, fans, pipes and tubes. To a time before cameras mounted on buildings and poles and peoples chests always watch. To a time when one could still be somewhat anonymous, and go to a department store looking terrible without it being splashed all over social media sites.

However: It is difficult to imagine back then how much I wanted something like the Internet to exist.

Being 21, living in a tiny efficiency in an unfamiliar city, pangs of loneliness accompanied me everywhere. Sure, I got along okay with my co-workers. Outside of them and my landlord, I hardly knew anyone. Some way to unfurl a desk-set and be connected to thousands of chat groups and dating sites would have had me crowing with gratitude. Indeed, the electronics magazines back then had many articles about personal computers, how they could balance your checkbook, store your recipes and so forth. Radio Shack led the charge with their TRS-80's. Remember Radio Shack? The place that filled itself with cellphone accessories in a last-ditch effort to remain relevant and solvent?

Back then, we used to repair things. Televisions, stereos and the like could be taken to a repair shop. Hobbyists used to build their own radios from discrete components. Our society was much more hands-on, and we had more control over our technology. And being an optimistic 21-year old infatuated with computers and technology, I wanted more and better. Some kind of personal computer connected to the world in the way we are in 2015 would have been the ultimate dream-come-true.

Well, the blessing has come, and with it the downside. The miniaturization, the networking, the outsourcing have all conspired and converged to create a cellphone society. 21-year-olds now walk around staring at their phones. We expect and have most everything at our fingertips. We cannot really repair anything when it comes to smartphones, or even computers. We discard, replace, ship it back to factories in China, Korea, Singapore or wherever. Our digital infrastructure seems out of our hands.

And our every move can be tracked and analyzed, watched and spied upon. Large organizations including the US Government know where we are, what we buy, what we like and dislike, what turns us on. Anonymity is a fading fantasy. Oftentimes we post much of our own personal information, trying to make ourselves known, to make our own little digital tracks and graffiti marks on a wider cyber world. “I was here, and have the pictures to prove it.” “Hey Big Brother, here is all my info, help yourself. Need more? Here, and here, and here you go.” We are the architects of our own public exposure.

Is this bad, terrible, a horror show, a travesty? Not necessarily. That 21-year-old inside me still likes the availability of vast social resource troves. But the 58-year-old realist is well aware of the price paid for such luxury. Once individual, now I am part of an online hive, unable to escape even if I wanted to. Which I do not. There is too much fun to be had here in the digital honeycombs, full of psycho-sexual delights. So I doubt I will ever try to drop out.

We in the USA have a spacecraft approaching Pluto, and pictures are coming in now. It has been in flight for nine years, going at speeds of 36,000 MPH. This is very exciting. But it differs from earlier flybys of the remote planets in our Solar System, like the Pioneer and Voyager flights of the 1970's. Then we had to wait for a TV special or announcement to show the pictures. A spokesperson intoned verbiage about the amazing wondrous discoveries, while we watched images displayed on small monitors in the background. And it was exciting, a first for humankind. But then, there was no getting on a PC, Laptop, Tablet or cellphone to see the images right away. We had to wait for the authorities to feed it to us.

Now, we the people seem to have a lot more power in terms of calling up whatever information or images we desire. Now we can have our information and save it too. Now I can see it in near real-time, something not possible during the Voyager flybys of the 1980's. Modernity is what it is, and to pull out now seems almost a recipe for suicide. So enjoy it while you can. Like everything else, there is always a dark side. The hacking attacks are something we must struggle with, as part of the darker side of our own natures. But we should probably persist. The world would be so much more depressing and gloomy without this cornucopia of online offerings. Stay the course. Thanks for reading.