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This article explores how Rush, Queensrÿche, George Orwell, Tron, and The Matrix predicted the AI surveillance age and how progressive rock, early cyberpunk, and a career in technology collectively foreshadowed the rise of Surveillance Capitalism.
Growing up, I was an early adopter of technology starting with the video game Pong in 1973, followed by the Atari gaming system, a Tandy PC with a cassette deck serving as a hard drive, and a 2600-baud modem.
I was something of a closet computer nerd, even as I surfed and played organized sports.
I also loved music, literature, and science-fiction films, all of which would heavily influence my eventual career path in technology, telecom, and cybersecurity.
I was fifteen years old when my older brother Bruce took me to a Rush concert in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1978.
They opened with Xanadu from A Farewell to Kings, then launched into the first half of their concept album 2112, which completely blew me away.
I was stoked from the first song to the last, even the encore.
What shocked me most was the sheer power and depth of sound coming from just three musicians on stage, combined with the technical mastery each one displayed: Geddy Lee on bass and keyboards, Alex Lifeson on guitar, and “The Professor,” Neil Peart, on drums—who was also the band’s primary lyricist.
It felt as if three grown-up child prodigies had come together to form a progressive rock band with something important to say while delivered through hard-driving rock and roll paired with cerebral lyrics centered on geopolitics, Orwellian warnings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, science fiction, and beyond.
The next day, I bought every Rush album available at Craig’s Record Factory—what now feels like the Smithsonian Institution for all things rock in 1978.
The first album I played was 2112, written by Neil Peart and inspired by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, as noted in the liner notes.
Those liner notes were essentially an analog web page, where my generation (Gen X) got all the inside information about our favorite bands.
The theme was unmistakable: a warning about the loss of individualism and creativity.
That idea alone would be controversial in today’s tech-driven dystopian world, where censorship is increasingly accepted as the norm—which is exactly what 2112 warned us about.
Headphones on, I listened to 2112 for countless nights—not casually, but intentionally breaking down every note and trying to understand what Rush was warning us about through its story.
In 2112, a creative artist in a future dystopia discovers a banned electric guitar and begins making music rooted in individual creativity.
Wanting to share his discovery, he presents his work to the Priests of the Syrinx, who scoff at his individually inspired art, smash his guitar, and send him away to be indoctrinated. They instructed him to think in terms of the collective rather than his own individuality and creativity.
Today, those Priests can be compared to the CEOs of monolithic tech giants who suppress creativity and artistry through AI—particularly AI trained on stolen ideas, stories, creativity, and intellectual property scraped from countless artists who published their work online through their own websites.
This practice has spawned numerous AI-related lawsuits over the past several years, most notably by actress Scarlett Johansson, a subject I covered at SXSW 2025 in Austin, Texas.
That content is ingested into large language models and re-emitted as “AI originals,” carefully designed to skirt copyright law.
That isn’t innovation—it is considered fraudulent by the artists at the center of ongoing AI-related lawsuits, who argue that their work has been collected without consent and monetized without compensation.
What struck me most about Rush wasn’t just the musicianship, extraordinary as it was, but the story.
2112 depicted a world ruled by centralized authority, where creativity itself had been outlawed. Technology was not liberating humanity; it was enforcing obedience through a monopolistic ruling class intertwined with the state.
This fusion of power created an oppressive, legalistic society that crushed civil liberties and human rights, all while those at the top ruled the populace. It wasn’t fiction—it was a warning of what has now manifested through Big Tech and government collusion.
At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was hearing. I only knew it felt important and deeply relevant to the work I’m doing today advocating for an Electronic Bill of Rights.
Nearly fifty years later, after a career spanning telecom, enterprise app and platform development, cybersecurity, AI, and investigative tech journalism, I recognize 2112 for what it was: an early warning about centralized power—whether exercised by governments, monopolies, or technologies that blur the line between the two.
That warning did not end with Rush. It echoed more explicitly and aggressively through Queensrÿche’s work in the 1980s, reinforced by 1984, visualized in Tron, and later crystallized in the original Matrix trilogy.
Long before smartphones, AI chatbots, and algorithmic manipulation became normalized, the pattern was already there foretold by Orwell, Rush, Queensrÿche, Tron, and The Matrix.
Today, their message is even more relevant than it was in 1949 (1984), 1976 (2112), 1982 (Tron), the 1980s (The Warning, Rage for Order, Operation: Mindcrime), or 1999–2003 (The Matrix trilogy).
We just didn’t want to see it.
I later turned my brother Scott onto Queensrÿche, just as my older brother Bruce had turned me onto Rush.
We still listen to Queensrÿche as much today as we did in the 1980s because beyond the message, the music is simply phenomenal, if there’s a way to say that without being profane.
Enclosed below is a high-level summary of 1984, 2112, Tron, The Warning, Rage for Order, Operation: Mindcrime, and The Matrix trilogy, and why these works are more relevant today than when they were first released.
1984 Arrives—Literally and Culturally
By the time I discovered Queensrÿche, it was 1984.
Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, had moved from speculative fiction into cultural shorthand for surveillance, propaganda, and manufactured truth. The Cold War was still real. Personal computers were entering homes.
And Queensrÿche was singing about control, not abstract control, but psychological control.
2112: Centralized Authority and the Suppression of the Individual
Released in 1976, 2112 tells the story of a future where creativity, individuality, and self-expression are outlawed in the name of order. Technology itself isn’t evil—it is controlled. Knowledge is gated. Innovation must be approved.
That distinction matters.
2112 is not anti-technology. It is anti-authoritarianism. It warns what happens when systems decide what humans are allowed to know, build, or express.
At fifteen, I couldn’t articulate that but the idea of the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx felt disturbingly plausible.
That intuition proved accurate.
Tron: When Technology Became the Enforcer
At seventeen, I saw Tron in a theater. For many, it was a novelty. For me, it was the first time technology was portrayed not just as a tool, but as an enforcement mechanism.
The Master Control Program wasn’t malicious, it was procedural, authoritarian, and rules-based forming authority embedded in code which is as relevant today as it was in 1982.
Ironically, Tron inspired me to pursue technology. But one question lingered: Who controls the controllers and/or who controls the programmers which is relevant today.
Who controls those to train generative AI or those who program quantum computing?
The Warning: Invisible Authority and Psychological Toll
Queensrÿche’s The Warning (1984) doesn’t scream dystopia, it whispers it.
Songs like “NM 156” and “Roads to Madness” explore power that is diffuse, institutional, and internalized.
“Roads to Madness” captured something I wouldn’t fully understand for decades: awareness doesn’t always bring peace but rather it brings isolation.
I experienced this firsthand as a researcher and government advisor for the Department of Homeland Security for the DHS S&T Study on Mobile Device Security, published in 2017. The more I exposed, such as the presence of preinstalled Chinese surveillance technology within a mainstream smartphone supported by Android, the more distant my DHS contacts became.
Whether they failed to grasp the implications or chose to side with Big Tech to suppress the findings in the final report, I may never know.
What I do know is that this experience revealed the tangible reality of Big Tech and government collusion.
In that sense, it mirrored what Edward Snowden experienced, though with a key difference: I did not work for the government.
My research into operating systems, AI, and apps has always been independent of any corporation or state entity. I am bound by no NDA and free to publish my findings.
Yet that freedom has come at a cost, including shadow banning on social media and even deplatforming for publishing fact-based articles grounded in hard data.
Rage for Order: Cyberpunk Before It Had a Name
By 1986, Queensrÿche went further. Rage for Order is cold, mechanized, and detached.
The “rage” in Rage for Order is not chaotic rebellion but is suppressed anger within an ordered, technocratic system.
Songs like “Screaming in Digital,” “Neue Regel,” “I Dream in Infrared,” and “Surgical Strike” depict a world where individuals are reduced to components, obedience is normalized, and technology mediates perception, communication, and authority.
Control is no longer overt; it is procedural, psychological, and embedded in systems.
Its aesthetic predates The Matrix by over a decade.
Musically and technically, Rage for Order was also ahead of its time.
It was one of the first heavy metal albums to be recorded entirely digitally, using early digital recording technology when most albums were still tracked analog.
This gave the record its distinct cold, precise, and mechanical sound, perfectly aligning form with content.
Rage for Order is truly a masterpiece for those who appreciate cyber-influenced music.
Operation: Mindcrime: Psychological Control as a System
Released in 1988, Operation: Mindcrime dissects power through the lens of psychological and cognitive control to overthrow the government.
The album explores how indoctrination, brainwashing, addiction, and weaponized belief systems are used to manipulate individuals into becoming instruments of violence through manufactured consent taken to its darkest extreme.
Listening to Mindcrime today is unsettling because the parallels are exact:
Technology amplifies this form of control, particularly through addiction.
The main character, Nikki, is indoctrinated with anti-government propaganda to such an extent that assassination is justified in the name of justice revealing how moral frameworks can be hijacked when belief systems are engineered.
This dynamic is directly relevant to modern brain-hijacking technologies used in AI-infused apps and social media platforms, as exposed by former Google product designer Tristan Harris in the documentary The Social Dilemma and publicly acknowledged by Meta co-founder Sean Parker in a 2017 Axios interview.
Operation: Mindcrime is widely regarded as one of the greatest concept rock albums in history, often mentioned alongside Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It also predates Radiohead’s OK Computer (1997), another landmark album that would later explore alienation, technological anxiety, and the loss of human agency in the digital age.
The Matrix Trilogy (1999–2003)
When I first saw The Matrix in 1999, I viewed it as science-fiction fantasy—until I began to understand Google’s browser-based business model in the late 1990s: Surveillance Capitalism.
That model was later embedded into Android, iOS, and Windows—operating systems that support pervasive data mining under the guise of convenience.
This reality was exposed by Edward Snowden through the NSA’s PRISM program.
No one can conclusively determine whether the Wachowski sisters were influenced by Queensrÿche’s work.
What is clear, however, is that Queensrÿche arrived there first, both musically and stylistically.
All one needs to do is compare the image of lead singer Geoff Tate on the back cover of Rage for Order with Neo from The Matrix; they look like they could be allies in the fight against AI-infused machines, a theme echoed in the song “Screaming in Digital” as well as in the movie the Matrix.
From Art to Reality: My Path Through Technology
My career gave me direct visibility into how these warnings manifest in the real world—from early computing and telecom to enterprise app and platform development; from helping launch the world’s largest legal hacking firm, Houdinisoft, to serving as a government and congressional hearing advisor; and from IoT integration and cybersecurity to AI, investigative journalism, and advocacy for an Electronic Bill of Rights in the 21st century.
Again and again, the warnings proved accurate.
The Silicon Valley Matrix Becomes Real
Surveillance capitalism is systemic.
Modern operating systems, AI-infused apps, social media platforms, and soon-to-be quantum-driven systems enforce it.
Apps monetize behavior while AI exploits psychological vulnerabilities, inducing the Eliza Effect which induces emotional trust in machines and technology while humanizing AI.
These systems don’t just observe behavior; they shape it on a planetary scale.
Without enforceable regulations, centered on an Electronic Bill of Rights, this trajectory will continue.
The trillions of dollars generated by the targeted advertising industry are too great for tech giants to voluntarily change course, especially as governments collude with these firms to erode civil liberties and human rights globally through the connected products of necessity required to function in today’s digital world such as our smartphones, tablet PCs, and connected products in general.
The Cost: Agency, Privacy, and Human Rights
What 2112, The Warning, Rage for Order, Operation: Mindcrime, 1984, Tron, and The Matrix warned us about wasn’t oppressive technology itself, it was oppressive governance using technology to control people, and ultimately to enslave them, as depicted in The Matrix trilogy.
Digital legalism replaces visible authority. Consent is buried. Compliance is enforced by design.
Conclusion: The Warnings Were Always There
Rush, Queensrÿche, Orwell, Tron, and The Matrix weren’t predicting intrusive surveillance software running our computers and mobile devices, they were predicting oppressive and tyrannical power structures that hijack technology for indoctrination, control, and enslavement.
I wasn’t just listening to music in the 1980s, I was listening to an early warning system.
The Silicon Valley Matrix didn’t arrive overnight. It was built incrementally through operating systems, apps, AI, and contracts of adhesion that force participation by requiring users to click “I Agree” simply to use the connected products they already pay for.
As the Silicon Valley Matrix spread across the world, the warnings played quietly on vinyl—delivered through analog technology in the form of a turntable that could only be experienced and interpreted by the listener, not monitored, mined, or manipulated by a company or a government.
The solution is no longer abstract.
An enforceable Electronic Bill of Rights is needed today, just as urgently as the Constitution and Bill of Rights were needed 250 years ago in 1776.
