At first sight, most of the gloomiest predictions appear not to have materialised. Computers have indeed become powerful beyond the wildest dreams of technologists, but the individual has survived. The Orwellian nightmare seems to have been contained. Most people go about their lives without giving Big Brother a second thought. This lack of consciousness is dangerous.
Technology is poised to become the greatest threat of all time to individual rights.
Silently, as the information society has evolved, the power of the information Tzars in control of the technology has hyperbolically increased. Technology has spawned an age of mass pacification. The Big Brother society imagined by the world in 1970 depended on coercion and fear. The society we are developing now is more like Huxley than Orwell. It is Brave New World.