I sympathise with your exasperation, but I think you're only considering half the story. What 1984 didn't depict or foresee was that the same technology that c

I sympathise with your exasperation, but I think you're only considering half the story. What 1984 didn't depict or foresee was that the same technology that can be used by corporations and governments to monitor citizens can be (and is) just as easily used by citizens to monitor the actions of the governments and corporations, and hold them to account. To quote John O'Farrell of Andreessen Horowitz [1]: “So, Orwell was partly right. The state uses ever more advanced surveillance technology to watch us, and our own ever-greater use of personal technology makes it possible. On the other hand, technology has fundamentally destroyed the state’s ability to control our access to information, and exposed its bureaucracy to unprecedented scrutiny. This may be the death of privacy, but perhaps it’s also the death of secrecy and impunity. In that respect, fortunately, Orwell was wrong. Thanks to technology, Big Brother may be watching us, but we’re watching him too.” Whether or not society is overall healthier in this state than it was before the technology emerged, I'm undecided, but the powers of surveillance do seem rather more balanced than the dystopian view suggests. [1] http://a16z.com/2017/05/15/andreessen-primack-dc-tech-policy-summit-2017/ http://a16z.com/2017/05/15/andreessen-primack-dc-tech-policy...