Seriously, do I just live in V for Vendetta the pre-world or something? The comic - over the movie. ___________ What happened to all the cool youths in the '80s who were totally into technology and on top of it and fascinated by how cool and open it made everything? You know, the cyber-punks, the Snowcrash readers, the neckbeard's evolutionary predecessor, who back then was skinny and pale with glasses and spider-like hands on his keyboard? Didn't they grow up? Didn't they register to vote?
It's important to distinguish between the UK and the United States. Remember - both Huxley and Orwell were British, and wrote trite little books about the dystopia that would probably happen eventually because humankind is fucked. The closest American parallel is Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, wherein the rise and fall of Huey Long is fictionalized as a lesson to American readers about not only the dangers of Fascism but also what to do about it. The British have always been complacent in the face of adversity. That's why the US is no longer a colony. Remember: Independence Day celebrates throwing off the yoke of British tyrrany. Guy Fawkes Day celebrates the survival of an oppressive king that personally tortured witches.
Mostly, in middle England. Although in some places, a spark still burns... http://www.lewesbonfirecelebrations.com/ "The Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations has never been for the General Public’s benefit and never will be, it is solely for the believers in our way of remembrance of history...all the Lewes bonfire societies have a close but at times, a strained and antidisestablishmentarianistic working relationship with the Authorities and Services..." They burn effigies of the Pope (amongst others), roll burning haystacks down the narrow streets and last I heard from one of a the few officers deployed on the outskirts: "Yeah, well, we just don't go in there, really." It's awesome. It reminds me of the Fallas in Valencia, another huge, citywide festival of fire. I wrote a thing on it a while back, maybe I can dig it back up.
I'm a little younger than those, but I run in circles where people work in cybersecurity, pen testing, and the like. Trust me: those people are still around. They're still trying. They don't have the funding of social media startups in Silicon Valley, though. Trust that there is always hope because of these people. Additionally, the government is fully aware of the potential threat of these people. When they inevitably get jobs with security clearances, they are well watched over.
Although some of them might be too young to fit the bill, a few names come to mind: Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jacob Appelbaum, Aaron Swartz [r.i.p.].What happened to all the cool youths in the '80s who were totally into technology and fascinated by how cool and open it made everything?