Surveillance Reimagined: The Shift from Orwell’s Big Brother to the Era of Big Tech Giants

Geroge Orwell masterfully wrote in his famous work of literature, 1984 – the phenomenon of a Big Brother, a symbolism for a totalitarian and authoritarian head of state. He illustrates the life of Winston, an individual with the many more citizens of the fictional state of Oceania, being surveilled upon by the state & party machinery. From the above characteristics, we can extrapolate the plethora of resonance with several eastern European countries during the 20^th century (before the fall of the Berlin Wall), and Central and South American countries. But the invention of computers, which led to the internet – dot com bubble, social media, and then now large language model; encapsulated by the big tech firms, they the big tech have effectively defenestrated the position of “the big brother” from the state to themselves, due to the matter of fact them welding DATA – the most valuable asset in modern times – even more than money, as data itself holds value, which in exchange can garner these firms enormous amounts of wealth – filling their already full coffers with a leverage against governments, whom have enslaved themselves due to lack of cognizance in regulating these firms.