For about three hours this morning I did not look at my Smartphone. Now for two of those hours, I was sleeping, but for one hour, I consciously avoided referring to my phone. I turned it off, making an effort not to use it to see who won the ball game last night, whether that obscure politician, athlete, or celebrity was still living or not.

We live, as we well know, in an Information Age, kind of like Fred and Wilma Flintstone lived in the Stone Age. They lived in Hanna-Barbera’s made-up Stone Age in order that Welch’s and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company could sell us grape juice and Winston Cigarettes. (They were two of the original sponsors). Now, in the Information Age, in our use of the internet in our quest for information, we are creating information about ourselves that the creepy tech companies sell to businesses. Surveillance marketing is the name. We are the information in the Information Age.

Where is the ideology in this? I think people could be in completely opposite identity groups and be mutually offended by the intrusions of the techno/information industries. But no. We all let ourselves be dehumanized. We morph ourselves into consumers, trading our dignity for digital coupons and Facebook “likes”.