Security guru Bruce Schneier recently wrote an essay for Information Security contrasting George Orwell’s “Big Brother” to current trends in technology:

Big Brother isn’t what he used to be. George Orwell extrapolated his totalitarian state from the 1940s. Today’s information society looks nothing like Orwell’s world, and watching and intimidating a population today isn’t anything like what Winston Smith experienced.

1984’s police state was centralized; today’s is decentralized. Your phone company knows who you talk to, your credit card company knows where you shop and NetFlix knows what you watch. Your ISP can read your email, your cell phone can track your movements and your supermarket can monitor your purchasing patterns. There’s no single government entity bringing this together, but there doesn’t have to be. As Neal Stephenson said, the threat is no longer Big Brother, but instead thousands of Little Brothers.

The fear isn’t an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state… It’s that we’re doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society.

You can read the full essay here.