Smartphones, self-driving cars, fake news, identity theft, cyberstalking, revenge porn… it was all in the future once.

Now the music industry's winner-take-all, publishing's getting there, people get their notions of reality from their social media Daily Me… even the NSA's been hacked. But what really worries me is what's coming:

— Why bother with gun control laws when we'll soon have home 3D printers? Throw in a wiki or two dedicated to Everyman's freedom to own a military arsenal, and the whole idea of gun control becomes a sick joke.

— As if our obsession with smartphones and tablets haven't trashed our relationships enough, we may all soon find ourselves competing with wearable devices and augmented reality for a moment of actual precious eye contact with those we love.

— You can already buy miniaturized spy gear; GPS navigation, long-range control, and live video streaming are all well established. When drones the size of dragonflies become cheap and ubiquitous, then (as Isaac Asimov memorably wrote in a story titled "The Dead Past") welcome to the goldfish bowl.

— If the Internet of Hackable Things doesn't get us there first.

— So far, developers of self-driving cars have done the easy part. Not to say that maps and driver-asist systems are easy, but the real world has thunderstorms and mudslides and spilled loads and oblivious people driving 1968 Volkswagens and kids chasing balls out into the street and bicyclists running stop signs and drunks and speeders and hastily scheduled roadwork. As various unfortunate Tesla drivers have discovered, this is all far from ready for field-testing. And plans to network all the cars and traffic signals together make the whole thing vulnerable to random interference and malicious hackers.

— Yes, self-driving cars would be a blessing for many: the blind, the elderly, people trapped in long commutes… not to mention surveillance and law enforcement. "I'm sorry" says your car as it exits the freeway, "but your destination is now in a secure area. Access denied."

I really should write Digital Woes 2.0. But it's all so depressing…