Freedom and reality in the computer age

Just read Michael Ventura's latest column, "This Dependent Dingus" in which he makes this interesting assertion:

The value the computer stands for--in its function--is interdependence. A vital value. The typewriter stands for the equally essential value of independence. True liberty consists of fair play between those seemingly opposite values.

I thought of the First Amendment, which I had already been planning to post here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In the age of the computer, the internet, surveillance cameras, and Google Earth, how do we preserve our civil rights? How do we protect our freedom to speak as well as our privacy?

And in this age, how do we know what is real? My friend Antonio sent me "Reviewing 'Reality'", an article about New York Times columnist Frank Rich. It's in the March/April 2007 Harvard Magazine. An excerpt:

Image wins out over reality more and more in the battle for attention and belief. Virtually every public event now arrives filtered through a lens, laptop computer, or recording device, and hence nearly all our daily news has been “produced” and woven into some kind of narrative. Old-fashioned, relatively unmediated reality at times appears obsolete.