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Out of context: Reply #23
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- lukus_W0
"how does this create an orwellian dystopia?"
Because digital technology has the potential to creates an inequality of power.
In one sense, at the moment it's difficult to lay down the law, restrict and control the things a person does - because geography and physicality makes it very expensive.
In digital spaces, it's simple and straight-forward to have this kind of control. Right now, if someone wants to moderate someone's behaviour on a site - or read through their emails or private data .. it's possible.
Lack of privacy (or total access to a person’s thoughts and ideas) gives any unacceptable amount of power to the person or organisation which has access to it. Any government or corporation - even when set up in a benign capacity - operates via interactions with regular people .. and these people have flaws like you or I do. Without a doubt, some will choose abuse power
When corporations are unaccountable to no-one but shareholders - they're tacitly restricted to only really caring about profit. This means that they're sometimes going to do stuff that's ethically dubious, if they can get away with it.
Take this propensity for corporations to go for profit at any cost, add increased power (due to the majority of our meaningful transactions being carried out online on sites controlled by private organisations) and I reckon potentially we could have a dystopia.
I reckon the only way to deal with potential bad stuff, is to think about what might happen and ensure that there's legislation (or at least general consensus) in place to stop it.