Two decades ago, at the dawn of the internet age, in an era before smartphones, before apps, before all manner of devices that monitor everything from your car-hailing practices to your dating preferences, the Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy made a startling claim:

“You have zero privacy anyway,” he said. “Get over it!”

The in-your-face concept had the benefit of being completely prescient and even an understatement. We are now the most data-generating, most uploaded, most share-crazy humans in the history of the world, which means we are also the most monitored, the most data-chomped and, definitely, the most exposed.

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Our information — much of it private — is the rocket fuel of the ever-expanding internet. Our data keeps it humming along, even as tech companies abuse that data with increasing frequency.

So here’s an idea: Maybe we refuse to get over it. Maybe we start to grok what we have become, and think harder about the trades we are making for the convenience we get from our gadgets. And maybe we put in place some rules — rules that have real teeth — on big tech companies.