Many amazing technologies have come into widespread use, during the techno-pandemic that we are experiencing. But in an age of tech enlightenment, we cannot ignore the dark side of technology.
Consider that there are cases where science fiction has evolved into science-facts. We are crossing so many lines that, some days, it would be easy to mistake Silicon Valley’s “Big Tech” for George Orwell’s “Big Brother.” It is uncontested that there is some scary technology out there.
Driverless cars are operating, as taxis in Phoenix. Drones are making deliveries in Florida. Computer chips are being implanted into the brains of test pigs at Neuralink with the idea that a human test may be “coming soon”.
The fact remains that some technologies have scary potential and a few were frightening from the start. You have to wonder if the tech geniuses who are creating them have considered the downside.
Elon Musk and other visionaries have acknowledged there are some dangerous possibilities to many technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
Is Big Tech the new Big Brother?
1984 was George Orwell’s classic 1949 science fiction novel. It was a powerful example of cautionary fiction set in a dystopian society. A place where everyone lives from birth-to-death in a state of mass surveillance and brainwashing. It popularized such terms as “Big Brother is watching you”, “doublethink”, “thoughtcrime”, “Newspeak”, “telescreen”, and the “Thought Police”.
