Whenever I think we’ve reached the pinnacle of our interconnectedness, some new technological innovation hits the news and I’m afraid again.

In London, a company has started a pay-per-view funeral service. Users can pay a fee and view the services from any computer with Internet access. While I imagine lazy surfers of the Web using the service to “attend” funerals sans clothing and carrying a bag of Cheetos, there are some practical advantages to the service. If a loved one dies on another continent, or if some other obstacle prevents a formal appearance at the funeral, then Britain’s online last rites service can prevent feelings of guilt for having missed the funeral.

At least, that’s one way of looking at it. I’ve never cared for funerals. When someone croaks, my being at a church or in a graveyard to look at their boxed remains isn’t going to make either of us feel any better. Funerals are creepy. Online funerals are beyond creepy. The cynic in me wonders how long it will take this new service to devolve into a new and bizarre brand of Internet porn.

I’m trying not to let this emerging e-business contribute to my growing dissatisfaction with modern interconnectedness. I’m resisting because I don’t want to become one of those naysayers of technological progress. I don’t mean to Bradbury, but I can’t escape persistent concerns that technology is giving us some serious negative consequences.

Everyone is online. Everyone carries cell phones. Private information is made public with the touch of a button. It’s scary, and it’s still blossoming. Swiss scientists are developing a system called the Grid. Once completed, the Grid will be 10,000 times faster than the existing Internet. Entire motion pictures will be sent across the world in the blink of an eye. Speed Racer will choke to death on the Grid’s dust.

If the Web is growing, what of the spider? I don’t want to go all techno-phobic, especially considering how much time I spend online myself. Nevertheless, the disappearance of privacy has me increasingly concerned that individuality is on its last leg. What is an individual anymore? Now that anything can be read online, what’s going to happen to print publications? In an age when anyone can post movies and music on sites such as YouTube, how are people going to make it big in the entertainment industry? How does anyone stand out at anything when life is public and computers rule the world?

It’s a slippery slope, I know, but doesn’t it seem like we’re sliding down that slope faster and faster every year? It began benignly enough with online shopping and blogging. Now people are uncomfortable walking 30 feet without their cell phones. Companies are webcasting funerals. Dateline NBC’s Chris Hanson is catching unsuspecting sex-offenders using online chat-rooms.

That last example is a plus. However, it was the Internet that allowed those predators to have lewd conversations with children in the first place. Where would we be without Chris Hanson’s subversion of Net peeping-tomfoolery? What happens when things become so interconnected that sexual predators create watchhanson.com, a Web site that delivers streaming “ChrisCam” feeds and up-to-the-minute updates on Hanson’s location? A thousand youth-hungry perverts can watch Chris Hanson, but there are only so many perverts Chris Hanson can watch.

I am again traversing the fallacious slippery slope, but need I remind you that information can be sent via fiber-optics at the speed of light. The electronic slope moves a lot faster than the slopes we’re used to.

How much more interconnected can it get? Will I eventually be able to digitally urinate from the comfort of my e-cliner? Will I still write bad puns like that in the future, or will bad puns be generated by online pun-generators?

I do have one idea concerning this brave new world that’s not all doom ’n’ gloom. Recently, someone told me that philosophers believe humanity is moving toward a collective enlightenment. Individual enlightenment is old hat; the only way we can evolve now is to unify. Interconnectedness may eventually be our road to a collective transcendence.

But that’s tomorrow, and this is today. I don’t trust cell phones. I don’t like satellites. Text messaging is the root of all evil, and the motion picture Ghost in the Machine is more relevant now than it was in 1993.

Charles Smith is a native Southwest Virginian who is either paranoid or a prophet. Or maybe both.