Where are we now?

At his trial after Second World War, Hitler's Minister for Armanents, Albert Speer, delivered a long speech in which, with remarkable acuteness, he described the Nazy tyranny and analysed its methods. 'Hitler's dictatorship', he said, 'differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made c0mplete use of all techical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man... Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level - men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communicati0n, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has risen the new type of the uncritical recipients of orders.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1959 CE.