Writing Feedback / Essay: Learning to live with Big Brother [2]

The task is to read an article from "the Economist" and write an essay (250 W). This article considers the implications of the rise of the new technologies that collect personal information. It is suggested that the lines between the 'old-time police states' and so-called 'free countries' are becoming less distinguishable as the development of new technologies has led to a world in which people's whereabouts, purchases, behaviours and personal lives are gathered, stored and shared on a scale that no dictator of the 'old school' ever thought possible.

I hope you give feedbacks to my writing. By the way, I am not sure with the last paragraph, it seems far-fetched to me. Maybe you have any ideas how to improve it?

A topic of great public debate at present is the rise of new technologies that collect personal information. Since no one really knows where such development will led our world, controversy over modern state, possibly becoming a new kind of dictatorship, is arising.

It is not easy to talk about such issues, because most people in Western democracies trust their authorities and avoid abusing the data that they possess. As a rule, citizens believe that private information gathering will be used for greater good. Actually, I do not find this statement at all convincing. For instance, on the subject of crime prevention, spy cameras on every corner may seem very useful, but at the other hand, if they peer down at citizens from streets, and in shops, banks, airports or even workplaces, is it still privacy we are talking about? Considering the interferance of new surveillance technologies in our lives, the risk of our life to become another "Truman Show" is increasing.

Despite the frightening expansion of surveillance, a further problem is the boiling frog effect. It is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually. According to the article, there is much sign of that in modern world. It is very interesting how people take no notice to the small changes and wake up only to see that there is nothing to do about the radical transformation of their lives. In short, the boiling frog effect is one of the forces most likely to bring society into radical modernization where no former rights are obeyed.

Such being the case I am happy that I live in ... . As we still have to deal with plenty of other problems, we simply can not catch up Western democracies with up-to-the-minute surveillance technologies.