The decline of Christmas and the looming tech nightmare

So we continue to make the mistake of conflating technology, which does bring many blessings, with the improvement of society. As computer industry pioneer Willis Ware warned almost four decades ago, new communication technology, rather than simply making information more universally available, could also increase the “intensive and personal surveillance” of individuals. This has resulted not so much in the creation of a surveillance state” as whatDavid Lyons has referred to as a “surveillance society,” where those who control information include not only state players but certain well-positioned private ones.

Far from being liberating and diffusing wealth, the emerging information economy serves “a new tiny class of people,” the tech visionary Jaron Lanier argues, particularly at companies like Google, Facebook and Apple that are repeatedly accused of abusing private information. As Google’s Eric Schmidt put it: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

In the coming years Google and other digital heavyweights hope to involve themselves ever more in our most mundane activities, whether by monitoring our physical functions or figuring out ways to profit from our inner-most thoughts. Yet the vision at places like Google goes well beyond the mundane, aspiring to powers once believed to be the province of divinities.