The trap has been sprung. The micro-processing revolution gave way to the Internet and the information technology revolution, but it didn’t take long for our most celebrated advances to turn on society.
A primary exhibit would be the NSA-Snowden revelations of 2013. For the first time, the mainstream media and the public at large got a broad scope look at the actual scale and reach of the digital surveillance state. Instead of fighting back, or demanding reform, the public cowed instead, as people began self-policing their speech on social networks. The mass psychological ‘chilling effect’ that so many contemporary futurists and writers warned us about has finally come to pass.
A century and a half later after his death it seems Jeremy Bentham was right – the Panopticon actually works. 20th century prophets like Eric Blair aka George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and others all issued vivid warnings about this dark prospect, but in the end it seems the intense glimmer of technology has somehow blinded society to its inherent risks....read more>>>...
