It’s 1984, so happy New Year, Mr. Gates

Kelly mcNeill writes “Most of the comments about the George Orwell novel “1984” made during the year 1984 were full of scorn. Indeed, most of the critics said then that the eerie picture painted of Big Brother was not likely to come true. Flash forward 17 years, and we have Microsoft proposing a sweeping Web initiative dubbed .NET, in which the company would be the “host” for the personal information of every single online consumer. The idea has some appeal as a possible way to access information from a central bank of servers using XML code to withdraw selected items from the vast database of personal information about anyone.”