We may remember 2018 as the year when technology's dystopian potential became clear, from Facebook's role enabling the harvesting of our personal data for election interference to a seemingly unending series of revelations about the dark side of Silicon Valley's connect-everything ethos. It's been enough to exhaust even the most imaginative sci-fi visionaries. "It doesn't so much feel like we're living in the future now, as that we're living in a retro-future," novelist William Gibson wrote this month on Twitter. More awaits us in 2019, as surveillance and data-collection efforts ramp up and artificial intelligence systems start sounding more human, reading facial expressions and generating fake video images so realistic that it will be harder to detect malicious distortions of the truth. But there are also countermeasures afoot in Congress and state government -- and even among tech-firm employees who are more active about ensuring their work is put to positive ends.

We may remember 2018 as the year when technology's dystopian potential became clear, from Facebook's role enabling the harvesting of our personal data for election interference to a seemingly unending series of revelations about the dark side of Silicon Valley's connect-everything ethos. The list is long: High-tech tools for immigration crackdowns. YouTube algorithms that steer youths into extremism. Doorbells and concert venues that can pinpoint individual faces and alert police. Repurposing genealogy websites to hunt for crime suspects based on a relative's DNA.