Yeah, it's bleak. The truth is free computing and communications are subversive technologies. They allows us to lock them out, to evade their controls and laugh at their authority. They make laws, people make technology to get around them. With every iteration, the tyranny required to maintain the same level of control over the governed is increased. They won't tolerate these games for much longer. Even more importantly, technology allows us to effectively organize opposition to those in power and that's something they absolutely won't tolerate. Western governments are already surveilling even peaceful protesters.

I believe we'll eventually end up with ubiquitous technology empowering an ungovernable population or totalitarian governments that control all technology by force.