Web 2.0 created Surveillance 1.984

Web 2.0 has had a massive impact for good on the lives of modern humans. Web 2.0 has also been complicit in ushering in the most advanced, pervasive and Orwellian surveillance state ever witnessed by humanity. You could say that Web 2.0 created Surveillance 1.984.

How might we retain the benefits of a hyper-connected and computer-augmented society without being constantly watched by people whose interests may not always directly align with ours? How can we use technology to fashion a future that we actually want to inhabit?

The full details of the monitoring apparatus that the NSA, CIA and other “security” agencies have constructed are still trickling out from the cache of documents released into the wild by Edward Snowden. What has become clear is that every action performed in the digital arena, whether it be sending an email, making a phone call, browsing a website, tweeting an opinion, buying an item, taking a photo or just moving around with a phone in your pocket, can, and usually is, being intercepted, stored and mined for information. The technologies and services that allow us to be constantly connected to information, colleagues, friends and loved ones at the same time allow the government to snoop on private citizens in an unprecedented, unrequested and effectively unregulated manner.

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