I am much more optimistic about the future than you. I don't know if it's naive, youthful optimism vs. experienced, jaded pessimism, but when I learn about new technologies and see what is being worked on right now, I feel incredibly hopeful for the future. The terms DNSSEC, DNS-over-TLS, DNSCrypt and ESNI promise a future without mass surveillance, free from the spying eyes of the NSA and all the other security agents. Trust me, oldtimer, things are not looking so bleak.
Tech opens doors, tech closes doors. It is a constant challenge, for young people ;-) But can you control the Internet backbone (AT&T) or the main nodes? But if you keep off any network, it isn't too bad, until they only allow computers that are "domained". That is how we roll in the military. And not trust other government agencies.
Think Soviet Union, with all copiers and typewriters strictly controlled. We are moving from low-tech dystopia to high-tech dystopia. This is the specialization of an ecological niche, until one is so specialized that a black swan takes out the whole biome. In short, you don't control all the OSI layers, and eventually like with Minitel (France) it will only be a public utility, and you will control nothing.
Nobody makes news or commentary, unless authorized ... aka official journalist, official newspaper editor ... all licensed by the government. People a generation from now won't even know what happened, down the memory hole.
