It’s coming.

Back in the late 1940s, George Orwell wrote his iconic book ‘1984’ about a totalitarian state in the future.

He based his future totalitarian state on the sexy new technology of the late 1940s, the television.

Big Brother beamed out messages from the television.

The television was the basis of ‘Thought Control’.

But

But what if Orwell had proposed a better technology of totalitarian control?

Something that might have actually worked?

What if every citizen were given a device that constantly measured where they were?

Big Brother, by overlaying that position on a map, could then see exactly what they were doing.

And by comparing the positions of other citizens, could then tell who the citizen was meeting with.

It would be the ultimate surveillance technology.

Would anyone have believed it?

Orwell might have just about persuaded his readers that such a device was possible.

He might have also persuaded them that a totalitarian state might force its citizens to carry one.

But what he would never have believed is the situation in 2010.

Where more and more people are choosing to carry such a device – a cellphone broadcasting their GPS location - voluntarily.

Many other changes

Many other changes are threatening liberty at the moment.

The roots of modern democracy can be traced back to the invention of the printing press.

Today, newspapers are dying throughout the world, and are being replaced by blogs and other digital media of questionable editorial accuracy.

The checks and balances of democratic societies are eroding.

So far

So far though, the digital revolution has proved a net freedom, as government officials leave secret files on laptops on trains, satellite TV opens up the world to objective reporting, and activists break through censorship using Twitter.

But they are successful because the generation running governments around the world are digital incompetents.

We should fear the next generation of politicians, who know what they are doing.

We are playing with exciting new technologies.

But we are also playing with fire.