s-already had the greatest opportunity to express themselveson a global scale and to form alliances that transcendedlocal, regional and national boundaries. Communicationtools that in the Orwellian world would have been usedto control individuals were, ironically, giving individuals themost powerful means of expression and the accompanyingliberation. In 1984, I believed that these tools and others yetto be invented would truly empower individuals.

Twenty-five years after 1984, this vision has been largelyfulfilled. Thanks to the World-Wide Web, the ability toaccess, communicate and search information, knowledgeand ideas previously restricted to governments and largecorporations is available to all. The disaggregation ofOrwellian control gives individuals enormous power. Alas,this power is not always accompanied with a sense of ethicsor social responsibility.

Modern communication technologies that leverage theanywhere anytime any format paradigm can be used to

Corresponding address: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74135, USA.E-mail address: pverma@ou.edu.

seemingly-uncontrollable individuals who are bent onabusing the techniques and tools that Orwell described.

It is also worthwhile to consider how corporate entitieswould evolve as the power of information disaggregationtouches individuals and corporations literally on a globalscale. Just as the difficulties associated with communicationsbetween widely-dispersed individuals have dissipated toinsignificant levels, so have they for corporate entities largeand small. I believe this will empower smaller organizationsto a far greater extent than larger organizations. In suchan environment, larger corporations will have to learn howto harness the immense advantages that smaller entitiescan offer, or else, become road kill on the informationsuperhighway.

Two recent paradigms, cloud computing and social net-working, will accelerate societal transformation, both forgood and bad. Cloud computing will do awaywith the require-ment of ownership of hardware or software by individuals

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George Orwells Nineteen Eightyprospective twenty-five years la

Pramode Verma

Telecommunications Engineering Program, University of Oklahoma TOklahoma 74135, USA

The profound societal impact brought about by the con-vergence of computer and communication technologies wasforeseen by a small group of individuals in 1972, who cre-ated the International Council for Computer Communication(ICCC) based in Washington, DC. ICCC sought to craft solu-tions that would reflect the concerns of all segments of globalsociety. To mark the advent of the Orwellian year of 1984,ICCC encouraged its principals natural scientists, social sci-entists, engineers, economists, thinkers and government of-ficials to put their thoughts in a book entitled So This is 1984(Elsevier Science, 1984).

ICCC naturally identified individual freedom and bigbrother control as the underlying theme for So This is1984. My own views at the time were that the widespreadavailability of information would drastically change society.Compared with any other time in history, individuals in 1984doi:10.1016/j.ijcip.2009.08.003A S T R U C T U R E P R O T E C T I O N 2 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 7 1 7 2

ciencedirect.com

.elsevier.com/locate/ijcip

Four A retrospective andter

ulsa, Schusterman Center, 4502 E. 41st Street, Tulsa,

benefit humankind or to inflict injury and death. We havewitnessed numerous incidents where these technologieshave been misused. A sad example is the November 2008attacks in Mumbai, India, where cell phones were used in realtime by the masterminds to guide even motivate the tenterrorists on the ground to engage in murder and mayhem.

Will the very tool that Orwell feared would be abusedby oppressive governments be exploited by oppressiveindividuals who function as transnational entities withoutany governmental or societal controls? Social scientists andpolicy makers indeed, the citizens of the world mustgrapple with and answer this question.

Still, I believe we have largely overcome the worstfears that George Orwell expressed so eloquently inNineteen Eighty-Four. I hope that, by working together,we can overcome the scourge of geographically-dispersed,

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and organizations. The cloud will offer a virtualized environ-ment where the existence of computing resources is totallyhidden from users; any desired functionality will be availablefor a fee. But could users lose control of their data and com-mands once they are entrusted to the cloud, where they maybe replicated and retained indefinitely? Indeed, cloud com-puting is a vast, new playground where the rules of the gamebetween and among law-abiding citizens, rogue elements andlaw enforcement agencies will have to be redefined in theirentirety.

Social networking technologies exemplified by YouTube,Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and the availability of proxyservers by willing third parties will make Orwellian control allbut impossible. Social networking also blurs the line betweenthe personal and professional lives of individuals, whichcan compromise the competitive advantage that corporationsmight wish to retain for themselves. Neutral nodes thathelp hide the identities of senders are already a reality.Social networking technologies are now routinely used tooutwit repressive governments in their attempts to identifydissenters, control information dissemination and restrictaccess to cyberspace.R A S T R U C T U R E P R O T E C T I O N 2 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 7 1 7 2

Clearly, the children of today who are growing up incyberspace will view privacy in a vastly different mannerwhen they reach adulthood. They will have to adapt to newtechnologies in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, tocomprehend at this time. The opportunities are tremendous,but so are the associated risks. Let us hope that GeorgeOrwells dire predictions will inspire us to use the immensepower of information and knowledge in a manner thatpositively impacts all the elements of our global society.

Pramode Verma is the Williams Chairin Telecommunications Networking andDirector of the Telecommunications En-gineering Program at the University ofOklahoma-Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Beforejoining academia in 1999, Dr. Verma spentnearly thirty years in the telecommu-nications industry, including twenty-oneyears with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lu-

cent Technologies. He served as the President of the Interna-tional Council for Computer Communication (ICCC) from 1997through 1999.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four --- A retrospective and prospective twenty-five years later