Orwell's "1984" has been quoted left and right, for years, but the reality that we currently live in has never resembled the dystopia that the author describes in his best-known novel as much as it does today. We are voluntarily giving up our privacy. We are forced to use it as a currency. That has never been the case before, but today it is.

It is almost impossible to function in today's world without giving up your privacy or rather having it invaded by a corporation or a government. The internet has, clearly, played a huge part in this. It may have brought us closer, but it has also brought governments and corporations closer to us, practically invited them into our homes and minds.

Mass surveillance

In his book "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State", the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, famous for writing a series of articles about global surveillance programs for The Guardian, compares our society with the Orwellian world described in '1984', writing: "Both rely on the existence of a technological system with the capacity to monitor every citizen’s actions and words.”

Here's a video of the whistleblower Edward Snowden talking about how easily every smartphone can be hacked and accessed:

Google has manipulated the internet and continues to censor information. Most of your private info, including everything from date of birth to current location, is up on various social media platforms.

Is anyone stopping to look around and ask: Isn't this wrong?

Meanwhile, governments all over the world, including the United States, are installing more mass surveillance, further invading little what's left of their citizen's privacy. Donald Trump, the anti-establishment's hope, is only picking up where Barrack Obama left off.

The Reality

Why do they do it?

We have been conditioned to feel OK about giving up our privacy (after all, don't they want to "protect" us from terrorism?), but governments and corporations use this information in countless ways. For example, Google's and Facebook's sophisticated algorithms are capable of profiling you to such an extent, that serving highly targeted advertisements and propaganda is a fully automated process.

You can even test this yourself -- try looking for something specific to buy and see what type of ads Facebook serves you. Is there any way to combat this? Saying "I have nothing to hide" and allowing the government to spy on you is like claiming you have nothing to say and allowing the government to take away your right to freedom of speech.