I love this part of John D. MacDonald’s ‘Free Fall in Crimson’. The hero, Travis McGee, gets frustrated with new technology. MacDonald was brilliant in having pinning an issue exactly. Even though he wrote this in the early ’80s.:

‘I jumped up so quickly I splashed some of my drink on the back of my
hand. In a higher than normal voice, I said, “I don’t like all this! My
God, when it got so you couldn’t rent a car or check into a good hotel
without a credit card, I had to sign up. I had to have a bank account to
get the credit cards. I keep getting into more and more computers all
the time. Boat papers, city taxes, bank records, credit records, IRS,
army records, census records, phone company records…. God damn it, I
feel like I’m getting more and more entangled Like walking down a dark
corridor into cobweb after cobweb. I didn’t sign up for this kind of
lousy regimentation! I don’t want to be a damn shareholder, owner,
manager, or what the hell ever. I’m getting smothered.”

They were both staring at me. “There, there,” said Aggie. “Poor baby.”
She turned to Meyer, “Poor baby doesn’t comprehend the modern way of
guaranteeing anonymity and privacy, does he?”

“Tell him, dear,” Meyer said, looking fatuous.

“Sit down, Travis. The computer age, my rebellious friend, is strangling
on its own data. As the government and industry and the financial
institutions buy and lease more and more lovely computers, generation
after generation of them, they have to fill them, they have to use lots
and lots of programs, lots of softwear to utilize capacity. How am I
doing, Meyer?”

“Very nicely.”

“Meyer taught me this. What you should do from now on, Travis, is to
make sure you get into as many computers as possible. Lots of tiny bank
accounts, lots of credit cards, lots of memberships. Have your attorney
set up some partnerships and little corporations and get you some
additional tax numbers. Move bits of money around often. Buy and sell
odd lots of this and that. Feed all the information you can into all
their computers.”

“And spend my life keeping track of what the hell I’m doing?”

“Who said anything about keeping track? If you can get so complicated
you confuse yourself, imagine how confused the poor computers are going
to be.”‘