When I was 6 it all changed. People had mobile phones and computers before then, but it was as if something had infected us – suddenly they were cheaper, easier to use and interact with. They became hip across all ages and cultural backgrounds. We became obsessed.

And that obsession grew like a cancer. We didn’t just want them anymore; we needed them like a drug. It became our reason to go to work, to earn money, to perform better at school. Somewhere along the way, we stopped using the machines, and the machines started using us.

God is in the machine. All’s right with the world.

The government’s been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the Forties. They’ve infected everything. They can get into your bank statements, your computer files, e-mail, listen to your phone calls, read your texts and voicemail. Every wire, every airwave. The more technology you use, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you.

It’s a brave new world out there. At least it better be.

I used to work for the N.S.A. I was a communication analyst. Listening to international calls, calls from foreign nationalists. Fort Meade has acres of mainframe computers underground. You’re talking on the phone to your wife and you use the word, “bomb,” “president,” “Allah,” any of a hundred key words, the computer recognizes it, automatically records it, red flags it for analysis; that was thirty years ago.

You know the Hubble Telescope that looks up to the stars? They’ve got over a hundred spy satellites looking down at us. That’s classified.

In the old days, we actually had to tap a wire into your phone line. Now with calls bouncin’ around on satellites and off of cell-phone masts, they just snatch ‘em right out of the air.