Techno-Dystopia

Convenience through convergence. The greater convenience technology brings is tempered by the lack of privacy that will become a necessary evil. Every government department will receive news that you moved from one house to another without your having to lift a finger...and they can just as easily know where to send that next late tax notice...

While the powers-that-be may tout the numerous benefits of progress, technology and the future, I think society is moving more towards a dystopia than a utopia. After all, the cyberpunk novels have been written about zaibatsus and how these giant firms begin to dominate the cyber-world. Greater and greater "security measures" are being devised to protect the rights of the rich as much as they are around to prevent crimes against the common citizens.

Perhaps a time will come, in the not-so-distant future, when mega-firms become veritable media monopolies in and of themselves. The authorities may have allied themselves so closely to these firms that there will be little room on the legitimate cyber-world to do anything that isn't strictly within the stipulated laws. And in such a world where cameras are virtually invisible even to the trained eye, there may be no safe haven for those who wish to oppose or cut themselves off from the authority-dominated society.

Some say that privacy is for criminals, who do not wish their evil deeds to be made known. But what of honest citizens who wish to stand up for their rights when the authorities think otherwise? What of those who just wish to not have some Big Brother staring over their shoulders? With the advent of new privacy-free technologies like e-voting, the epoch of a techno-dystopia may be sooner than some think.