1984: The New Must-Have Christmas Gift
 

It continues to amaze me how 1984 was a mere 20 years ahead of its time. How a machine introduced in 1984 with an advertisement that threw a hammer through an Orwellian big-screen TV display would, 22 years later, figure prominently (along with similar devices offered by "your friends at Google") in the capitulation of that same vision.

Here we have a device in your living room that you can speak to. That you can ask questions and it will answer them.

[i]That is necessarily listening to every word your family says within its earshot, and, thanks to today's highly-refined speech recognition technologies, understands every word and knows who is speaking.

In years past, you "helpfully" tagged your friend's pictures on Facebook. You might have noticed how your phone identifies common "faces" in the photos that you take and invites you to name them.

Who gets this information? No one knows. (Although you can be sure that many people who came from (or came from near) countries that the United States has been at (undeclared) war with for 15 years, are working in those computer centers wherever they may be, for no more reason than because "they work for cheap." But that's another story.)

There are still no laws regulating this, and, in the public's continued (but, naive) infatuation with these geegaws, still no call for it. Still no cognizance of the fact that "Knowledge Is Power," and that it is a power that can be used for good or for ill.

But we, in our industry, had better be prepared for a sudden reversal from these "happy times," because sooner or later John Q. Public will become terribly aware of just how Internet technology and the total loss of privacy can be used against him. When he does, the repercussions against us will be quite severe.

Richard Stallman was well aware of this also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkkDvKGcNSo (skip to 30:00min)

-edit

Sad to say that I have a smartphone, *sigh*.....

And I thought you meant the 1984 that was 68 years ahead of it's time :)

Just send them a link instead of a boring book. No body but oldy folks like us read a good book anymore.

Stallman discuses the fight against total surveillance - RT, ironic?