A very significant change occurred in my thinking a few years ago. During the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Chicago, my daughter went to Grant Park, the main public space in downtown Chicago. She sent me pictures of *thousands* of armored police troops. It was out of the question for protest to be effective. A demonstration could be crushed like a bug in a minute.
I was young during the civil disobedience era that was the civil rights movement and, separately, caused America to get out of Vietnam. People got hurt, but it was possible for people to confront the government. The police had the advantage but, public opinion kept a rough parity. Police were allowed to use nightsticks but not guns. Abusing a protester was dangerous for the police.
These are two points on a continuum that illustrate the transition from a world where the transition from quaint old visions of limited intrusion and municipal power have transitioned from enough to make society work to enough to keep society under control.
Now we have new things that were reasonable when they started but are starting to show their teeth. EasyPass toll paying systems do not need to keep track of every time you pass a sensor, but they do. Automobiles don't need to record everything you do, but they do. Cellphone monitoring. Website super cookies. Cable tv reporting viewing habits. Facebook granting access to your friends list every time you use it to login.
If these things are on the more reasonable side of a transition resembles the changes in police policy over the last forty years, it is hard to imagine that we have a comfortable future ahead of us. The police, at least, are (slightly) constrained by the Constitution and law. Much of the potential in our future is at the hands of corporations that are constrained by neither.
Facebook can kick you out any time it wants. It can cut off what is probably the main way you communicate with most of the people you know. This is a disturbing possibility made real by the changes in technology. When Facebook was just for college students, nobody could have seen that it would be the intermediary that would connect you to your old auntie who you never get to otherwise see.
Those overlords need resisting. They are just getting started and the future they have in mind is not pretty.