Some People See What Others See... But Only 40 Years Later
In science fiction (sci-fi) literature, authors make predictions either about something that they envision or consider strictly fictional; sometimes it is something they want, or something they definitely do not want (i.e. it can be a cautionary tale). The work known as "1984" envisioned that year in some certain way and even 40+ years after the real 1984 people still refer to current, contemporary events as "1984" (some commentary on what skinnerboxes, surveillance and censorship would potentially look like).
The above screenshot shows hours-old comments about RMS (Dr. Stallman). Ignore the context of the nasty comments (it's a generally unsavoury site controlled by the rich). To me, personally, some time around 2004 was the year I became better aware of the warnings that Stallman et al had issued for decades prior. Before 2004 I was just barely exposed to these ideas. Not many people talked about them. For instance, not many people believed that the locations of their mobile phones were not just tracked all the time but this data was also sold. Up until 2003 I had carried around (with the battery removed) a 1990s Motorola 'dumb phone'. That then... abruptly ended. The benefit of being able to place calls was outweighed by all those other factors.
When people deviate from "the norm" they typically get ridiculed and dismissed as "crazy". That's the first step. █