Futurama

This will be incomplete - anyone who reads this, please add a comment with more examples.  

The future is now! I was watching "That 70's Show" and Red, the curmudgeony old father and Vietnam war vet, was grumbling because he felt that he was not living the future he had been promised, where is the jet pack?  where is the hover car?  True, the 70's was the beginning of the tech era, and the few techy devices were big, awkward and glitchy. I remember my dad had a "car phone," the size of an igloo cooler, incredibly complicated, nearly useless when he was out in the woods.  The popularization of the CB radio put us in touch with random strangers. We played "pong" for hours on our cousin's TV.  Our favorite shows were "Lost in Space," and "Star Trek."  Ok - my favorite shows were "Bewitched," and "I Dream of Jeannie," but I watched the other ones with my brother.

Now?  we have com devices.  Except our cell phones do so much more than just communicate with the Enterprise.  We have all of the information of the world at our finger tips, and the GPS capabilities that saved Kirk on so many lonely planets.  Remember the video phone from "2001 a Space Odyssey?" Dr. Frank Poole calls home to his wife and adoring daughter, and interacts on the large video screen in real time.  Skype anyone?  When my brother was in Iraq, my mom saw him more than she does when they live in the same state.  Many of the sci-fi shows of the 50's-70's treated pay/payments by "credits" as a standard.  In the now, many of us use fewer and fewer tangible forms of money.  Debit cards are easier than cash.  Even small companies often offer direct deposit, and on-line banking is so safe and easy, that I'm even doing it.  I just signed my daughter up for a reloadable visa card, I can add money on-line, or have her allowance automatically deducted from my account onto her card, and track everywhere that she uses it.  If it is lost or stolen, I get to cancel it.

"With great power comes great responsibility."  How cheesy am I? Big Brother IS watching.  Many of my friends choose to be completely "off the grid," and function without the comfort and convenience of technology.  Somewhere in my heart and head I sympathize with the sentiment; many of us grew up deeply influenced by the cold war, closely guarding all personal information, not wanting to be vulnerable in case of an insidious take over by a subtle foreign (or not so foreign) power.  Our children will be much more savvy about how to keep their information private, and they will have better tools for doing so.  They will learn from our mistakes, and our criminals.  For those that are very concerned that the government is tracking our computers and cell phones, I think a time will come where lack of activity will draw more attention than any specific activity.  

I have an adolescent.  Like it or not, she will function in this futuresque world where "personal" does not have the same connotation that it had for us.
This age of technology does challenge us as parents to define our moral compass in a new context.  We used to worry about our sons getting hold of Penthouse magazine, now we worry about our daughter's sending graphic pictures to their boyfriends via text. Embarrassing moments used to be something you hoped people would forget, now we worry about them becoming viral on You Tube.  I still believe that we cannot protect our children from the world, especially one that we barely understand. We can only teach them to protect themselves, and trust that they will learn from their mistakes, and hope that they learn from ours.