Meanwhile, technological power has instead gone to the megacorporations, which have amassed enough of it that they now rival governments in reach and strength.

Meanwhile, technological power has instead gone to the megacorporations, which have amassed enough of it that they now rival governments in reach and strength. Citizens attempt to use technology to check their power, but are routinely thwarted by the fact that the corporations have technology at least as good, as well as better funding and large numbers of warm bodies willing to do their bidding—either under threat of losing their livelihoods, or because they enjoy the exercise of power themselves. I agree with your conclusion (it's unhelpful to have an overall pessimistic view of technology), but changing which pessimists you listen to does make a difference. In this case, rather than listening to the pessimism of George Orwell, we apparently should have been listening to Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, because the broad strokes of what we have now are very similar to aspects of the cyberpunk dystopia that their works and those that followed them described.