Orwell seems to have missed a bit.

[1-Old-Man]

You will recall that in 1984 all the Party members has telescreens in their abodes and this was one of the primary means by which they were controlled. The telescreen could watch you as you watched it and Party rule was thusly applied. But of course all the Telescreen could do is watch the mundane and tell the authorities if you were in or out, not much more. Orwell's crystal ball was a little clouded, he missed the coming of the cell-phone.

Of course Orwell's desire was to show a state in which there was omnipresent surveillance, but he apparently could not imagine what we have today. In 1984 it was the Government who imposed the watching device on the (selected) people. Today people clamor for the newest, latest, and greatest personal tracking devices they can find. Gimme a 5-G I-Phone, gotta have it, gotta have it. And unlike Orwell's screens that could only tell if you were home or not today's phones will track (via built in GPS) everywhere you have been (and by intersecting lines tell who you have been with), how you got there, how long you stayed, and by what route you came back. Most can listen in on whatever is said (turned on or turned off) within a fair range as well. And the thing that makes this sort of anti-Orwellian is that while the Party members in the story 1984 despised the surveillance put on them we seem to cherish it. For many it is an absolute nightmare to find themselves in an uncovered area.

I love it when people say this or that historical figure is rolling over in his or her grave. If the dead can actually do that then if they dig Orwell up and flip him around it will cause the Earth will start spinning backwards and the sun will rise in the west.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I think it must be some time since you read it

Telescreens were normally placed so that they could watch the whole apartment - Winston's was unusual in that it had a corner in which he could write his diary. They did more than just know if the person was at home - he gets berated early on for not trying hard enough in his exercises (so they know they are actively watched, at least part of the time), and they could pick up sound. They put microphones all over the place, as well as cameras, so the surveillance is pretty pervasive. And only the rebels despise the surveillance - part of the point is that the populace is being brainwashed into accepting it. That, of course, is the point of the end - even a rebel can be brainwashed into loving Big Brother.

Yes, he didn't have people clamour for a surveillance tool. But his novel was about a world in which even the appearance of freedom is taken away. It was written after a decade of rationing, and most of that in a world war. It wasn't a warning against consumerism, it was about totalitarianism.

[1-Old-Man]

2. Good points

Actually I've re-read it about once a year for the last decade. I am interested in your point about the appearance of freedom being taken away. There is just one thing that hangs in my mind, unresolved at any level. Its the Proles. They went about their meager business unmolested. I have never understood why he wrote them to be so passive with the apparatus of the state focused on its own.

Maybe its time I read it again.

[Aristus]

3. That's actually a focus of Orwell's narrative:

"If there is hope" wrote Winston, "it lies in the proles".

The proles comprised 85% of the population of Oceania, and they were not subject to surveillance. But the reason for this was because the members of the Inner Party knew that the proles were too ignorant of their own oppression (as well as their own potential strength), and too obsessed with the petty distractions, irritations and pleasures of daily living ever to be a united force standing in opposition to the Party.

The proles were bombarded with distractions such as lotteries, spontaneous struggles amongst themselves for scarce goods, sporting events, pornography, and other things to show much concern for politics. And any prole who rose above the others in his awareness of the repressive Big Brother would be conscripted into the armed forces and "disappeared" somewhere in the world during the perpetual war between one or another of the three superpowers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Yes, I suppose the proles did have a slight amount of choice

They still had pubs, for instance, so they still had a bit of spare cash to decide whether to spend there or not. And while the Party is meant to be forced into rigid ways of thinking with Newspeak, the book rather gives the impression that it's all aimed at them. Orwell does have Winston say "if there's hope, it's in the proles", but I think he doesn't explain their passivity enough, as you say.

[grahamhgreen]

5. I recommend the USPS start a phone service that is encryopted and private for all Americans.

The data on my phone, all my internet traffic, etc, should all be protected by the 4th amendment.

[1-Old-Man]

6. Maybe it is protected, its just that the protections are being ignored.

Which begs the question, is a Constitutional right really a right if the Government ignores it or has set up an apparatus to side-step it?

[grahamhgreen]

7. Not if there are no consequences for them when they break the law:(

[Generic Other]

8. Winston found paper and a fountain pen at an antique store

and hid his thoughts from the screen. That was his first act of defiance. It is the opening of the novel.

Words on paper. Subversive.



Poster made of digitally combining multiple paperback covers of various editions of Orwell's 1984. By me. (Shamelessly promoting my own work on DU).

[Octafish]

9. What Frank Church said in 1976...

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022995684