I enthusiastically collect stories about the unintended consequences of technology. A prime example was the voice-activated tape recording system installed in the Oval Office during the Nixon Administration. Its presence resulted in the only resignation of a U.S. president.

I realize now these stories focus on the intention of a single individual or small organization, and the punchline is always that the technology created a situation they never imagined.

What I haven’t focused on until now is that the unintended consequences of all our technology – collectively – will just as likely surprise us as well, whether we choose to directly use technology … or not.

How to “live below the radar” has always been a popular topic of conversation, but it’s getting harder and harder to do. And now that more and more technology is everywhere, it doesn’t help that it’s invisible. The truth is we don’t know what technology is recording what information about us, where and when. Or who might eventually gain access to it.

Now, I’m not proposing some doomsday scenario here – but rather it’s that we’ve finally reached a point where information has become so small and information recorders of every ilk have become so ubiquitous, it doesn’t stop there. Information can now network, store, replicate and distribute – and as a matter of fact, it does.

I was sitting in a Starbuck’s in San Francisco, tapping away on my laptop and looking out onto Market Street. I sat by the window to get a bit of sunlight and listen to the streetcars, take in the hundred year old brick buildings and artfully planted trees and pseudo-gas street lights, intentionally meant to remind you of Paris. Inches from the window, I looked around and saw tiny video cameras everywhere – both inside and out. And those were the ones I could see. My own cellphone could take a pretty good video and I could ship it just about anywhere, and no one would be the wiser.

And that’s for starters.

The person in front of me in line had bought a $3 coffee drink and laid down her credit card. Remember when there was a minimum? This tiny transaction was stored in multiple locations and transferred far afield, all before her latte was placed in her morning-groggy hands.

Sure, we’ve been talking about this all along, but then it was going to happen. Now, it has happened. We’re shedding DNA in every direction, certainly on that coffee cup in front of me, and in the middle of all this I took a call from a friend of mine. When I picked it up, the cell site closest to me pegged my location to a number of feet - time, date and duration. I began to think better of using the wireless connection to the Internet, as then even the wireless network would know where I was.

Between what we do ourselves and what is done to us without our knowledge, from face-recognition systems to the recording of every transaction, we are now moving through a world of “data instances” – exposures to recording who we are and what we are doing.

In many ways, we’re going to have to wait for the other shoe to drop about the unintended consequences of what we have wrought.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.