Virtually anything we try to do nowadays, from buying tickets to conducting our banking to making medical appointments, requires that we fill out on-line forms. And these forms are rigid, demanding an arbitrary array of information—often intrusive information.

All of this is annoying enough, but the kicker (for me) happens when the information we enter must correspond to preset categories within the e-form, even if the information is false.

Case in point: last week, trying to register for an event where a grandchild’s participation had been pre-approved despite the child being too young, I ran up against the problem of needing either to “lie” by clicking on a false (older) age or to omit the child from the roster. Otherwise, there was no way to move to the payment screen.

I checked again with the event organizer. “Yes, it’s fine. Go ahead,” I was told, “and click whatever age works.” “Fine,” I thought. And I did.

But is it fine?

The thought wouldn’t leave me. Not only have I entered false information (although, one could argue, harmless in this case), but how far does this problem affect all of our lives? To what degree must we, as a society, now regularly click on falsehoods in order to get things to work?

What about entering phone numbers long forgotten in order to get into an account? Changing personal information in order to correspond with pre-set categories on applications? Clicking on an untrue “area of concern” in order to get past the barriers to speak with an actual person in customer service? Or, our favorite around here, changing a person’s name in order to correspond with what the computer thinks is the right name?

This example refers to my husband, Hank. His legal name is M. Fletcher Reynolds. He bought his first car under that name. He graduated with his many degrees and bought his first house under that name. He practices law under that name. I’m fairly sure our marriage license bears that name. Virtually everything he has done officially as an adult has been under that name.

But today’s computers will not tolerate an initial as a first name. No “M.” and no other initial either! The box says “first name” and that name better be more than one letter long.

Within this virtual world, there could never have been a J. Edgar Hoover, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or E. Power Biggs, not to mention an E. B. White, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, or J. R. R. Tolkien. Taking into account the personalities of most of these people, they would not be amused.

But it goes beyond dictating stylistically how a person might name herself. The machine is now in charge of who we are. There used to be jokes about how widgets would dictate the way humans function in a science-fiction future. Those predictions are no longer funny and no longer science fiction.

The strictures we face in technology’s shadow bother me more on some days than on others. But they bother me. One can always walk away from some things: certainly I have watched my husband walk away from major purchases (like a car) when the company refused to allow him use his legal name on the necessary forms since his name begins with an initial.

But our options to walk away are becoming more and more limited. Would you walk away from filling out a form that was necessary to obtain a certificate or copy of a diploma for an upcoming job? Would you jeopardize a family member’s insurance coverage? The number of times filling out an on-line form now stands between us and critical services staggers the mind.

That passport names must match birth-certificate names: I do understand this. And generally a full name lies behind the first initial, whether or not a person uses, or cares to use, that name.

But not always. I grew up with kids whose names really were initials: J.B., D.J., A.C., and several more. Can that even happen these days? In an era when one very nearly can marry one’s dog, is one still able to choose initials for a name? The computer will be far more tolerant of the first circumstance than the second. Particularly if the dog has a full first name.

Decades from now we will know the answer as to how this plays out. Meanwhile, it is a love-hate relationship for me, as I (like you) deal far too many hours daily with computers, cell phones, voice-activated “receptionists,” and grocery-store apps. My mother used to say that one of the negatives of becoming older involves remembering how things used to work. In her case, the comments had to do more with recalling an era when people dressed decently to go to the department store or to church, or when more patience and graciousness were exhibited in public.

I long for these too. But I also long to be able to dial a number and get a person to answer. To have a human being take my suitcase at the check-in counter, weigh it (no matter what the result), and talk to me about the flight delay, rather than grappling with a snazzy neon machine that requires multiple rounds of button-pushing before it sucks my bag in and out for me to verify information and attach the stickers, finally rewarding me with a flimsy boarding pass (on which very well may be printed wrong gate information).

And I want to be able to fill out a form with correct information. Is it a losing battle?  Perhaps, but I am not ready to yield.