I'm not sure your personal business being logged can be compared to the social change of the Industrial Revolution.
Cast your mind a few hundred years ago, where people were born, grew up and died within a few miles of their village. Everybody knew your business back then; your character, whether you were hard working or a drunk, whether you were honest or a crook, whether you were late for church, or couldn't afford new shoes, or whether you were barren. We've been here before.
The question is whether now that we are in roughly the same place, are we going to go back to the oppressive small mindedness of the village, or can we master this without all becoming judgmental busybodies.
One difference will be that in the time you speak of, a person could just leave and start over. More recently, people had several major chances to reinvent themselves early in life, as they went off to college or to work. Most of the world was not in your small hometown. Increasingly, though, there will be no place to go where you are unknown, and there's no frontier to go to if the social pressure becomes unbearable.
A random stranger showing up would be assumed to be the worst type of person. Anyone of good repute would arrive with letters of introduction from several business partners and local officials.
Cast your mind a few hundred years ago, where people were born, grew up and died within a few miles of their village. Everybody knew your business back then; your character, whether you were hard working or a drunk, whether you were honest or a crook, whether you were late for church, or couldn't afford new shoes, or whether you were barren. We've been here before.
The question is whether now that we are in roughly the same place, are we going to go back to the oppressive small mindedness of the village, or can we master this without all becoming judgmental busybodies.