George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four was far more prescient than any person realized who grew up in the middle decades of the 20th century. It was centered on the very special technology (information technology, as we call it now) that would in fact emerge and shape the world over the next two generations: central to the success of the vast, totalitarian empire was called the telescreen, a wall-sized panel display that could simultaneously send and receive images from each individual household to a hovering Big Brother. The telescreen was what permitted the vast centralization of social lift, for it allowed the government to banish privacy by motoring every word and deed over a massive network of wires.
