We can't dispute the fact that the advent of technology has played a great role in improving activities in the workplace. With the networking of the different PCs in companies, it has become easy to send a broadcast message to all staff at a time, and coupled with other sophisticated technology, coordinating and controlling multiple workers has become easier which has resulted in a high level of productivity and an increase in the staff to management relationships.
The main achievement of technology was that it made absolutely everything easier. It's easy and fast to do hard, complex calculations, it becomes possible to book things from home, it's possible to connect with friends, it's possible to buy things and trade with different parts of the world from your home or office, it's possible to work from your home to a different country. Many things became possible thanks to technology and it accelerated absolutely everything and every process in the world.
The point of controlling what workers do is to increase the productivity, not gossip. The managers are not there to prevent you from doing something that is not related to work, so that when they catch you do something, they go ahead and gossip about it with other managers, that ain't the reason, hell they couldn't care less at all.
However, they do it so that they could increase productivity, if they are following you on CCTV and they are checking every website you are visiting, that means they are trying to just keep you working. In most cases, someone works 8 hours a day, with 1 hour break, and 2 15 minute breaks, that's how it has been everywhere I worked, that means you work 6.5 hours and during all that 6.5 hours, they want you to only work and nothing but work.