Far away on the moon-ward horizon a luminous silver mist veiled the distant view.

On each hand the gushing waters play, / And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall.

Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

First, came an uneventful puddle jump to the chaos of LA International, where, surrounded by thousands, I looked out on the tarmac at the massive aluminum monster that was to be my flight to New York.