If you've read
this Twitter thread on just how much information companies like Google and Facebook keep on you, and I strongly advise that you do, then you might understand just why I'm making this thread. You're handing over a complete record of everything you do, everywhere you go, and what you think about to private companies. Locations, purchases, Google searches, your entire life.
So, let's say an totalitarian regime comes to power in an area that is currently considered to be democratic in the year 2020. Is that so hard to believe? Look at 1900 vs 1920. Then 1920 vs 1940. 1940 vs 1960. 1960 vs 1980. 1980 vs 2000. No one ever imagined accurately how things would be after a mere two decades; are we arrogant enough to believe that things have finally settled down into a stable configuration? The predictions of Clinton's era did not describe what 2020 would be like, and I suspect we don't have a much better grasp of 2040. It is
not inconceivable that a DPRK-style regime will arise in Europe or North America within the lifetime of a young person like me.
And there is an ominous trend - twentieth-century authoritarian states arguably lost because they were less efficient than democratic, market-driven societies. With the ability to access such complete information on every one of its citizens' needs, opinions, or desires, that disadvantage might disappear or reverse itself entirely. Vast databases will concentrate power into the hands of those with the resources to gather the data (let me remind you that potential threats are being flagged
today by algorithms based on not even actions, but general patterns of behavior).
Does a dictatorship really care whether someone is innocent or guilty? They only need to remove the threat to themselves, and I don't see why it would matter if that threat was a statistical one. If an old man posted something political that the regime didn't like back when he was young, well, the algorithm says he is likely to not have changed his views. Let's arrest him and his entire family. I have no doubt that CFC will be included in an internet trawl, and that its users could be traced back to their real identities by a malicious government.
So yeah, this is worrying right
now with all of the legal protections and rights you currently have. But the data is there, stored permanently, and it only takes a change of legality to give the secret police access to it. Are you confident that no such change will ever take place?
The second-best-case scenario, I think, would be a dictatorship that ruled the entire world and didn't care about anything but stability. Without competition or any ideological vision, it might leave general society alone, monopolize data-gathering and only act to crush disruptors.
The
best-case scenario would be a traditionalist revival that abhorred technology. The Amish double their numbers every twenty years, but that won't even begin mattering until the twenty-second century. My hope is that the ocean of misery the internet has already caused will drive people into their arms, or to form new pro-natal religious communities.
My personal advice is to move to a remote, isolated location where a government may be less likely to see you as a threat and less worth its time to conscript/indoctrinate. And never use anything that stores information or connects to the internet again.
My point is, he was too angry, too pessimistic, about society. And fed into the general cynicism of the 1970s, which imo was the most destructive social force in the second half of the 20th century.
