John Patterson :

We live now largely as adjuncts to our computers, as fallible back-up hard-drives made of meat, subservient one day – and perhaps already – to them and their evil sisters, the TV and mobile phone, with half our minds online, and all our experiences mediated by screens of glass and the ebb and flow of binary code. We have avatars and Second Lives, erasable online identities and the ability to hack into those of others.