Google Glass is the most hotly anticipated new arrival in "wearable computing" – which experts predict will become pervasive.

The next stage is computers that fit on to your body, and Google's idea is that you need only speak to operate it.

(To activate Glass you need to tilt your head, or touch the side, and then say, "OK Glass, record a video" or "OK Glass take a picture".)

If you think your friends are online, you’re missing the human dynamic of a real relationship. You can’t see facial expressions; can’t hear the tone of voice – all you’re dealing with is digital messages, which are usually meaningless and never meaningful.

So what can be done? The first step is to bring the issue into the public consciousness.

Every time you read a newspaper on your computer or buy an ebook, you can leave an electronic trail behind you. That trail is potentially lucrative for business, and is a new source of surveillance for government and law enforcement.

Retailers and search engines, most notably Amazon and Google, can now gather an astonishingly detailed portrait of our book-reading habits: what we buy, what we browse, the amount of time we spend on a page and even the annotations we make in an ebook.

Amazon also reserves the right to disclose information when it "believes release is appropriate to comply with the law". A stronger protection for our privacy should require a warrant before personal data is released.

Mednarodna zveza za telekomunikacije (ITU) potrdila standard za podrobno pregledovanje internetnega prometa (deep packet inspection, dpi).

Internetni promet je sestavljen iz t. i. paketov. V vsakem je del vsebine (spletne strani, datoteke ali česa drugega), paket pa je opremljen še s kopico drugih podatkov, od glave (header) do opisa protokolov, storitev in še marsičesa. Glava je nekakšna kuverta, v njej so zapisani glavni podatki, da lahko brskalnik ali drug program iz več paketkov, ki lahko potujejo povsem neodvisno drug od drugega, sestavi pravo vsebino.

Z dpi pa vidijo tako vrsto internetnega prometa kot njegovo vsebino. Zakaj je to pomembno? Operaterji lahko tako »upravljajo« promet. Kar v praksi pomeni, da upočasnjujejo ali celo blokirajo posamezne vrste prometa, denimo torrente ali telefonijo IP (skype). Lahko pa bi tudi ponujali naročnino na hitrejši youtube, morda posebej prodajali dostop do facebooka.

Successful technologists are the new "ruling class". In this digital world order, money and power are concentrated in the hands of a few.

Each technological innovation produces the potential not just for cyber-crime, but for manipulating the way we lead our lives.

imagine you take a driverless taxi. Without explanation, it lingers in front of billboards during your journey or forces you to a particular convenience store if you need to pick up something. Is that very different to search engines reading your mind through your click-habits or Amazon telling you, often accurately, what you really want to read next?

it is no longer reasonable for the big players - the Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes and Twitters - to say: "Nothing to do with us, guv, we only provide the pipes. What goes through them, that's up to the folk who put it there."

To illustrate an example of information misuse, it's worth recounting the alarming experience of a work colleague at the hands of Facebook. Someone he did not know took his name and set up a Facebook page purporting to be his, along with a photo and several intimate details, some true, some false.

Citing "freedom of expression", which like motherhood and apple pie is impossible to attack, they will host their anonymous contributors' bullying, lies, smears, breathtaking invasions of privacy

So many early predictions about the internet and world wide web turned out to be wrong. It was going to be a goldmine with limited use – in fact, it has turned out to be almost the exact opposite: a sprawling society, rather than a market, with unlimited use.

We might, however, be on the brink of an age where internet technology does indeed change many aspects of our lives: engagement in politics, constructing and conducting relationships, culture, knowledge. The dizzying prospect is that everyone is potentially part of the network, rather than on the receiving end.