Does Modern Technology Enslave Us?

a reply to: AlmostRosey

My girlfriend and I had a pretty in depth discussion about this the other day.
Back when the internet was just emerging into the everyday home I can still remember how electronics were still 'our' slaves, technologies that made our lives easier, but at the same time we controlled them 100%, even the early internet was like this, nothing got passed us unless we typed in our password, or we told the internet what we wanted to find, or the computer how to act.
I think it all started to change with video games really, consoles that all you needed to do was slide in a game, sit back and relax while the game system did all the work for you, all you had to do was play the game, save it, and turn it off.

That was only, what, 13 - 15 years ago?
Now look at what we have, cell phones that do everything you want it to do and more, logging into a computer and all your passwords ready for you to log in, emails sent directly to you. What control do we really have?

originally posted by: AlmostRosey

Echoes of the novel 1984 will haunt any discussion on a topic like this. Are our modern day gadgets being used against us? Have we entered a phase in society where complete privacy is almost an impossibility to achieve?

Down to the last microprocessor, it does.

The internet itself is essentially a gigantic "telescreen" network. Everything you like, everything you hate. Every word. If you speak out of turn. If you tell someone you don't like them. If you don't like Obamacare. If you don't think they should be monitoring your phone calls, someone will eventually ask you if you agree with it or not. When you say you don't agree with it, someone will certainly tell you that someone needs to listen to your phone calls because you wouldn't care if you weren't doing anything wrong.

If Orwell could have possibly imagined the technology that exists today, this is exactly what he would have written about.