This results in technology servitude.  I am referring to a loss of personal freedom and independence because of uncontrolled consumption of many kinds of devices that eat up time and money.  Most people do not use independent, critical thinking to question whether their quality of life is actually improved by the incessant use of technology products that are marketed more aggressively than just about anything else.

Hyperconnected. Always on. These terms have been invented to describe the environment created when people are linked continuously through tech devices to other humans and to global intelligence. Teens and young adults have been at the forefront of the rapid adoption of the mobile internet and the always-on lifestyle it has made possible.

The U.S. government -- and likely your own government, for that matter -- is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques, or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary -- sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without.

Let's get this out of the way first: It's impossible to go 100 percent invisible online if you use the internet in any capacity. We still don't completely understand the scope and power of the NSA's surveillance capabilities, and it's highly unlikely that any single individual, no matter how resilient their encryption protocols, could withstand a rigorous investigation by the U.S. government. Still, there are ways ordinary users can better protect their privacy online. This isn't by any means an exhaustive guide; rather, it's a starting point to help educate beginners about the sheer amount of data we leave out there, and what we can do to keep it safe from prying eyes (the NSA's or otherwise).

Legal and technology researchers estimate that it would take about a month for Internet users to read the privacy policies of all the Web sites they visit in a year. So in the interest of time, here is the deal: You know that dream where you suddenly realize you're stark naked? You're living it whenever you open your browser.

Someday a stranger will read your e-mail, rummage through your instant messages without your permission or scan the Web sites you've visited - maybe even find out that you read this story. You might be spied in a lingerie store by a secret camera or traced using a computer chip in your car, your clothes or your skin.

This summer, Facebook will present a paper at a computer vision conference revealing how it has created a tool almost as accurate as the human brain when it comes to saying whether two photographs show the same person - regardless of changes in lighting and camera angles. A human being will get the answer correct 97.53% of the time; Facebook's new technology scores an impressive 97.25%. "We closely approach human performance," says Yaniv Taigman, a member of its AI team.

New technologies are making it easier for governments and corporations to learn the minutiae of our online activities. Corporations collect our information to sell to the highest bidder while an expanding surveillance apparatus and outdated privacy laws allow the government to monitor us like never before.

Advances in technology are allowing people to more easily capture moments, such as the Etheridge confrontation, on photo and video with their cell phones and then easily post it on social networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Privacy is the capacity to negotiate social relationships by controlling access to personal information. As laws, policies, and technological design increasingly structure people's relationships with social institutions, individual privacy faces new threats and new opportunities. Over the last several years, the realm of technology and privacy has been transformed, creating a landscape that is both dangerous and encouraging.

18% or Americans surveyed by report being "private" people, yet more than half of those people have revealed their location in a Facebook status update, and less than a third of these "private" people have changed their privacy settings