Huxley and Orwell Were Wrong: Telecommunications, Autonomy and Freedom

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The new telecommunications and information technologies are overwhelmingly favourable to the extension of individual autonomy and political freedom. With the reduction of information interchange and processing costs brought about by technological innovation, the individual faces a new era of all-encompassing opportunity. History may be kinder to humanity than Huxley and Orwell feared. Instead of changing us all into couch potatoes, the new technologies have already empowered a sizeable minority of us to know more about our own selves and the world, and to create work that others can value. Instead of playing into the hands of authority, they have reduced State sovereignty, increased democratic control and, above all, expanded the spontaneous order of the Open Society.