seinundzeit

I think one of the author's main points is that just as much about the development of wide surveillance was contingent, we're still at a point where we could choose not to have this become more pervasive, and it would be a mistake to assume that that's inevitable:

"For the masses, the feeling that technology develops along an inevitable path reflects their lack of agency — the fact that the crucial decisions about the technological conditions of society will be made by a largely self-regulating confraternity of elites. For engineers and scientists, technological development appears to be driven by a combination of what they can imagine, what is technically feasible, and what governments or markets demand. Even those whose particular genius produces the breakthroughs feel this as an inevitability, as if they are possessed by some inner logic that is the real force ushering in this new world."