Of course, man. I grew up with the Apple ][ and C64 and we all saw a future where small businesses and creative people would make zany, informative, cute newsletters to advertise their wares.

Our parents and teachers prepared us for a world mostly like the one that existed in 1980, but some of the icky parts like bookkeeping were ameliorated by the 6502.

We went online a little bit, but mostly to goof around, trade some software and maybe sometimes discuss and flame, but it was always a tiny part of life, about the footprint on our time as the card game UNO. An interesting diversion, but certainly not a daily activity, much less a dependency.

Of course, older now, we realize there was much more brewing behind the scenes: Corporations had been leveraging Freud's psychological principles to make us rabid consumers. Cold War paranoia created an arms race. American military hegemony had been cruising to a head.

We plugged on, amused we had internet in college, but still found time to play music, party, ride bikes, etc. Suddenly around 2000, networking fused the military and commercial nature of American life into the portable mega-mall of cookies.

But with all this communications technology, why only use it when sitting at our Pentium II's? Let's get everyone carrying cell phones -> surveillance capitalism.

It's starting to all come together for me as I re-watch The Century of Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

What to do? Opinions vary. Many people will argue whether we can legislate our way out of it. I like to believe we can empower ourselves and not drink the Kool-Aid as heavily by making choices to stay offline, not use Amazon, support local businesses. I live my life that way.

However, we are not rational. I will convince very few people through my (sporadically, ha!) clear-thinking. Plastic, celebrity merchandise will emerge from the factories, from the chemical plants, from Hollywood, from Saudi Arabia, from the fractured wells below our plains.

So, yes, yes and yes, I still recall the joy of plotting large, clunky GR mode pixels on the apple in off-kilter pink and green colors to make a flower. I miss hearing trackers simulate analog through careful timing of the PC speaker. I still dream of families rolling up their expenses in Excel.

I wanted all of this tech to be used for cute, cozy, cheerful families and towns. To see it weaponized around me, to fear not exactly my own government, but hacking groups hired by Ireland-based corporations, foreign insurance agencies and hospitals trying to steal my identity each time I simply look up rock videos from the 1990s is sad and distressing. It's humanity out of control.

It's very astute that you mention "living a lie." We are coming face to face with it through numerous channels. According to Freud, we have humungous darkness in our unconscious. With persistent media and industrial exploitation of these impulses, it's getting harder to ignore.

I believe religions in the past attempted on some level with varying tactics and degrees of success to confront this. However, the demands on our everyday reality have shifted. We can see through most religions's tactics and where we can not, our purview is heavily obscured by cultural noise, such as anecdata, fake news, etc.

I maintain the best thing to do now is empower ourselves through understanding the history of the last 100-200 years and what the ideals of freedom and privacy mean as we "transistorize" the world around us. This empowerment demands a certain kind of clarity which can be difficulty to find, but if anyone wants to talk about it, get in touch.

In the meantime, I highly recommend anyone interested watch The Century of Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04