Welcome to the voluntary “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”George Orwell’s epic novel, published June 1949, gave Americans an early look at the potential scope of government surveillance and power.Sixty years later, we haven’t gotten very far from previously far-fetched ideas.In the novel, the “Ministry of Love” actually tortured people.Today, we have “enhanced interrogation techniques” at the prison formerly known as Guantanamo Bay.Orwell inspired his own language, known as “Newspeak,” described as “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.”Today, merchandise is a thing of the past while our terrible economy slows our “merch” consumption.In the novel, we learned “Big Brother is watching you.”Today, we have the Googlezon.In a nine-minute flash movie, “EPIC 2014” produced a world where Google — with its incredible search algorithms and seemingly limitless storage space — and Amazon — featuring user recommendations based on previous page views and purchases — combine to form Googlezon, the last word in technology, media and social networking.The Museum of Media History, creators of “EPIC 2014,” presented its picture for how the Fourth Estate — the press — would be toppled by participatory journalism, with unlimited help from the Internet industry, according to CNet.com.We can already see the effects of participatory journalism. For a time, the only footage being released from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai came from uploaded cell phone videos posted on CNN’s interactive feature “iReport.”Googlezon meets its final battle against The New York Times, whose case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices rule in favor of Googlezon.This clears the way for Googlezon to produce “EPIC” — which stands for “Evolving Personalized Information Construct” — paying users to contribute information they know, much like Wikipedia, into a central grid for the purpose of creating news tailored specifically for individuals, without any help from journalists.Our fears about Big Brother are coming to fruition — only now it’s all of our faults.Last Wednesday, Google released Google Latitude, which allows mobile phone users to share their location with their contacts. Working under the Google Maps umbrella, Latitude uses Google’s technology to judge a user’s location not just by GPS satellite, but by proximity to mobile phone towers and wireless networks, according to CNN Feb. 4.It isn’t quite installing chips into people’s heads and tracing their every move, but it’s the next best thing, especially in an age where everyone and their grandmother has a cell phone.My own grandmother, thankfully, has not upgraded from her home phone, though it is cordless.In addition to Google Latitude, a rumor previously held only in the blogosphere is sprouting into an awful reality.GDrive, still unannounced by Google, is presumably a service enabling users to access their PCs from any Internet connection. Some tech news sites are calling it “the most anticipated Google product so far,” according to Fox News on Jan. 26.GDrive would shift away from normal operating systems in favor of “cloud computing,” where storage and processing is done in data centers, essentially making hard drives obsolete in terms of storage.GDrive remains a rumor from the official mouth of Google, yet its plans are in the works. Brian Ussery, a blogger and director at SEO Technology at Search Discovery Inc., searched the code within a Google page and found the word “GDrive” within the computer code, according to Computer World.While much of the buzz about GDrive is positive, many worry about the front it presents to the desktop computer and much bigger privacy issues involving the cloud capable of storing virtually all of our personal information.”It’s clearly where we’re all headed,” said John Byrne, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research. “More and more of the services and features we’re used to getting on our PCs and systems will come from the cloud.”I, for one, fear the cloud, but I have no alternative but to submit.As students struggle about whether they should deactivate their Facebook accounts, the debate increasingly becomes a moot point as our social networks, search engines and online supermarkets become more entangled and integrated.What works for Google and Facebook — their unlimited potential in terms of content and convenience — is exactly what will bring all of us down. Our complacency following the ease of all our friends, news and hobbies organized into one all-access grid will breed a new generation of blind acceptance.This is understandable considering the current state of cable news, where a non-story can be overblown and dramatized with enough sensationalism that it captures our interests and eventually dumbs down our culture.We have two options: Break free from the spell of convenience, or submit to the Googlezon.Even President Obama couldn’t give up his BlackBerry.I guess we’re all Screwgled.- – – -Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at [email protected]