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MIT Technology Review on Where Orwell Went Wrong
nakhla writes "MIT's Technology Review is running an interesting article entitled Who's Afraid of 1984? The article talks about Orwell's famous work, and examines how Orwell's view of technology's impact on freedom and democracy was flawed. The article points out that, in fact, freedom and democracy were strengthened by technological innovations, and addresses its affect on Stalinism and Nazism. An interestng read for those who are worried about technology's impact on our generation and beyond."
So far, the only thing we know for certain that Orwell was wrong about was the year.
While the point is well taken that technology has been used for more good than evil throughout history, we should not celebrate it blindly. Recall that such innovators as Henry Ford and Eli Whitney had worldviews that we would call racist and fascist today, and that Nazi Germany gave us advances in physics (via rocketry) and mathematics (encryption). The current crop of rogue hacker terrorists is just the latest iteration of this all-too-common archetype. Technology can be a great thing, but it shouldn't be worshipped without skepticism.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I think Orwell was more afraid of Socialism than technology.
Someone you trust is one of us.
So between:
Facial profiling
Universal Id's
Echelon systems
Wiretaps that don't require court orders
Carnavore systems
We don't have an increasing trend of monitoring technology?
With almost all forms of communication going digital we don't have increasingly easy monitoring?
With the war on terrorism we don't have justification for increased monitoring?
What about all the cameras we now have all over Britain and increasingly in other metro areas?
We definitely are increasingly having Orwell's big brother/sister. I'd say the distinction is that society is welcoming/asking for it.
Rather vanilla article, pretty much just a re-hash about what's been said about 1984 over the past 2 decades.
Hidden near the end, for those that can't/won't read the article:
Radios have become so inexpensive that Intel is now planning to engrave a miniature one on the corner of every silicon microchip, at no extra cost.
It links to a subscriber-only article, so there really aren't any further details. Hell, I think something like this deserves a Slashdot story all to itself! This has gotta be the coolest hack I've heard all year.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
[Redacted by Homeland Security Autofilter]
They did not use technology to make totalitarianism unstoppable, they did it through doublethink. You imprisoned yourself. In fact they never killed anyone who did not wish to be killed for the crimes they did against the state.
The whole idea of doublethink and the ability to hold 2 contradictory ideas at once as truth is a powerful tool of control. It requires zero technology. The MIT guys totally missed the boat. In the end if you remember Smith wished to die for his sins.
I wish I could say our society was doublethink free, sadly everyday I see more evidence of its growing existence. Orwell may have been off a few decades, but he was right on the ball.
The point of 1984 was not so much that there would be technology sufficient to implement totalitarianism (which as others have pointed out, we have today). The main thing was that "whoever controls the past controls the future".
That's why I fear Big Media aggregation. When news, history and other public information gets disseminated from fewer and fewer sources, it's going to be more and more tempting for those sources to use that information power to their own ends. Consider the term "Disneyfication." Also:
Ketchup is a vegetable.
Global warming? It's not true, and besides, there's nothing you can do about it.
Corporations are not bound by the pesky constitutions that kept governments from doing what Orwell predicted.
The article's premise that Orwell was a "futurist" is flawed.
Even a cursory examination of 1984 reveals it to be not a prediction of the future of technology, or any, future, for that matter. It is a heavy-handed condemnation of totalitarian states, whether they be "communist" or "capitalist". One could also view it as the "dark" Animal Farm, but that would be glossing over targets: AF *was* about communism; 1984 was about statism in general.
Excluding the lugubrious prose, 1984 is still a pretty effective argument against the total state, and its message is all the more germaine in this day of Homeland Security and PATRIOT acts. Remember that Winston Smith was an English bloke, one of the "good guys", but he still wound up eye-to-eye with ravenous rats.....
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Orwell's vision wasn't wrong, it may be he just had the year incorrect. Not everything has come to pass yet. Yet being the operative word, especially if we as a society allow it. Just look at proposed legislation in our own congress (copy right and anti-terrorist and `protect the children`). Look at the DCMA (Is reverse engineering really illegal???).
Here are some other things that HAVE come to pass
1. Many Police units have their own paramilitary force
2. Camera Camera everywhere, and more on the way
3. Reading certain books can and will get you put on a "watch list"
4. Members of certain political parties are actively discriminated against (not all presidential canidates will face each other in a debate)
5. Loosening controls on wiretaps and eavesdropping (more so in Europe than here)
This article didn't convince me that our freedoms aren't under attack. It just reminded me how many sheep there are in the world
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
> I can't think of any other book which has had such impact on freedom and human rights in this century
Mein Kampf, perhaps? Maybe not the effects of the book itself, but the effects of the horrors arising from its "teachings" have had a huge impact.
(And what's the betting that somebody mods this down because they didn't read that scentence correctly?)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
This is still something that would have been predicted by psychohistory - the release of the book and the delay it would create in the inevitability.
er, I've been reading too many books.
The risk isn't in the technology itself but in who controls the technology. Sure it is possible to listen to dissention but that is merely because those in power have failed to keep ahead of the curve. Look at the western world now. Information is controlled by a small handfull of media conglomerates, these conglomerates in turn set the political adgenda and present the populace with their own views on the world. The internet is a great source of information but with the exception of google think about where they are going. Remember that the internet is still a somewhat new phenomenon to corporations. People with power and money can already pay to have their sites appear at the top of any search leaving dissenting sites almost impossible to find and litigation can destroy sites critical of them. While we are still in very good shape as far as access to information goes on the web how long is it before ICANN becomes completely dominated by corporate interests and won't accept "unsatisfactory" webpages.
Sure there is a good chance that in the west we may be able to avoid it but that doesn't erease the chance of it happening. I would argue that China is very much becoming 1984 as envisioned. As to fabrication of information just look at the Beijing newspaper's response to finding out The Onion story was false "'Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money,' the paper said. 'This is what the Onion does.'" Is that bending the truth enough? Add to that blocking certain content from being accessable over the internet, controlling the media, numerous human rights violations, indocternation, spreading false news about "enemies" (Falon Gong), they arn't that far away from reaching Orwell's vision.
I stole this Sig
It's especially crazy that they would write now about how mistaken Orwell was. Last year, it might have made some sense, but now... Nearly every day I hear about more and more moves by the U.S. government to loosen restrictions on police to spy on U.S. citizens. Also, there's talk about an American Empire -- how the U.S. government should rightly rule over the rest of the world, and from "mainstream" intellectuals rather than extremists.
The fact that the U.S. government is using technology to move towards totalitarianism does not mean that technology is the important ingredient. And, of course, the fact that many Americans are responding to the propaganda they're being innundated with by calling for more security doesn't suggest the absence of totalitarianism. When the Reichstag burned, most Germans were scared and were willing to give up some of their liberty for some more security. Totalitarianism only works when the people ask for it.
The problem, though, is that there's a sort of event-horizon with liberty. There's a point beyond which you have little room for resisting. And it's possible for most people to cross it without noticing. As long as nobody is shooting at you or otherwise interfering in your life, you might not notice that some of the most effective means for radically changing government have been eliminated, and that suppression of dissidents has become so efficient and effective that effective dissent becomes impossible. When you start to see the darker side of the "security" you asked for, you find that there's no turning back. In Germany, it took the destruction of the country and the deaths of millions to unseat Hitler.
Fortunately things aren't so stark as that. Supressing dissidents is never easy, and human ingenuity has a way of somtimes finding ways around "insurmountable" problems. But I think the event-horizon analogy is appropriate, because it doesn't take large scale repression to protect power and stifle resistance. There is a point where resistance and chance of success become much more difficult, and you can easily pass that point without noticing.
The article seems to view Western democracy as the antithesis of totalitarianism. The fact is that anyone can start a web page and say any number of things that will get them interrogated, watched, arrested, or shipped off to camp X-ray without your lawyer. Really, just start a site claiming to be an Al Queda operative, post some bluprints of a government building.
The article seems to take the argument that "look how much better we are than 1950" But in reality, has freedom and privacy increased since 1970, 1980, or 1990? Sure we can exchange information easier.
And the quip about democracy spreading between 1989 and 1991 makes me think about what life has been like in the former Soviet union since that time. It seems to me war, strife, and poverty are the most prevailent things that have spread in the region. And what about organized crime?
No one can honestly claim that western democracy is the epitome of a perfect free and private society. The system is not perfect, but only works most of the time. Innocent people are put to death or jailed for decades. Cops abuse wiretap all the time.
And last time I checked there is still a totalitarian regime in place in China despite faxes and the internet. According to this paper we should be flooding Iraq, Cuba, Iran, etc with technology to liberate it from their dictatorship. And look at Japan, despite being one of the most high tech places on the planet, is still occupied by the country that conquered it over 50 years ago.
Short wave radios may have carried the news, but that doesn't mean anything if it only carries CNN or better yet, Army PsyOps officers. Guess who has an office within the CNN offices? one man's radio free whatever is another's war propaganda.
The author seems to agree that Hitler was able to use radio to spread propaganda to millions, while saying that Orwell was mistaken in thinking that radio would be used for propaganda. Huh?, we sent PsyOps to every warzone we've been in to spread propaganda.
He also makes the statement that Orwell was mistaken about governments using technology for surveillance. Remeber that 747 the US sold to Chinese premier with something like 200 listening devices installed in it. What exactly is Carnivore if not using technology for surveillance on the populace. And thats just the one we know about. In fact now corporations have more ability to spy on us than ever. Employee routinely look up private information for "fun", as do cops. IsP Technicians have packet sniffers running at all times and can look up what page your computer is surfing at any time, and they log the stuff. Any bank employee can get your credit info at any time.
(call up your ISP and tell them that you can't connect to your web page, ask them to watch for the connection to find the problem. Ohh, How'd they do that?!?)
This article is very Jingoistic. It claims that its only 1984ish if someone besides Western contries does it. Since our democracy is infallible and perfect.
Be careful not to mix up governments and economic systems. Pure communism is only an economic system (i.e. it's actually possible to have a democratic government and a communist economic model). Nazism is a form of fascism, which is a system of government. Stalinism was a dictatorship - also a form of government.
The economic spectrum ranges from capitalist to communist, with socialism somewhere in the middle. Since there are no strict examples of pure capitalism or pure communism in the world (and probably never will be) we all basically live in socialist economies, which lie at various points along that spectrum. As an example, Americans like to dub Canada a socialist country, because it has universal health care, but Canada and the U.S. are actually close together on the socialism continuum: both have public schools, welfare, and strong labour unions, for instance.
On the other hand, there are tonnes of different governments... democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, fundamentalist regimes, you name it. Many are also combinations of those systems.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Well, long term at least. The printing press made cheap paper useful, and that encouraged and enabled literacy, and the main government of the day, the Roman Church, could no longer keep the actual Bible contents secret. The result was a decentralizing of power from Rome to individual nation states. It has continued to decentralize into smaller and smaller communities. The spread of information robs those in power of their control over information, which makes it that much harder to steer things their way. The US had 3 national networks for a long time, but cable brought in more, and now the US gov can't control news as easily as it used to. The cheap computer was the next step, first bulletin boards and now the internet.
Sure there are wobbles in the trend towards "information wants to be free", but the overall trend is unmistakeable and unstoppable: less centralized control of information means less centralized control of people.
David Brin wrote a book, The Transparent Society (I think), which considered what will happen as webcams shrink. Neal Stephenson (sp?) wrote The Diamond Age along the same lines. Scott McNealy is right: privacy is dying, get used to it. It will hurt the powerful more than the poor. Look what cheap videocams did for police brutality in the Rodney King case. Now lots of cop cars have cameras, more for self protection against false claims than for evidence of crime or for TV ratings. Imagine what will happen when ordinary people have access to floating dust mite webcams, ten to the dollar. What would you rather watch on the internet spy cams: someone getting banged in a trailer in Kansas, or back room deals at the White House? Well, maybe individuals will watch the Kansas coupling, but the press and volunteer watchdogs will opt for the White House every time.
Infuriate left and right
Whether it's a totalitarian controlling all information or a few media conglomerates, what's the difference? A small group of people decide what's important to the viewers. I just watched a program the other night that compared crime rates to the reporting of crime on TV. Crime reports went way up over the past ten years while the crime rate went down slightly. It gives the impression to the uninformed that crime has actually sky-rocketed out of control.
Keeping a high prison population is also a good waste product that boosts GNP. In the U.S. the prison population has gone from 200,000 in early 1970's to over 2 million in 2002. The majority of that is due to nonviolent drug offenders. Yet prison construction and technology is one of the highest growth industries in the U.S., and it's basically corporate welfare.
The article also claims that technology and democracy were responsible for the demise of Communism. This is not true. The USSR couldn't compete against the U.S. market dominance. Capitalism is geared toward utilizing resources as quickly as possible for maximum capital growth, and the U.S. works very hard to make sure we have access to the world's resources.
It's not just a coincidence that the U.S. has been trying to build a pipeline for natural gas through Afghanistan for the past few years with no luck. Now that we've installed a U.S.-friendly regime the pipeline will be built, and the engineers will have U.S. Rangers to guard their construction efforts.
In summary, the author saw a few differences between Orwell's vision and reality today and decided that everything was incorrect. We're suddenly living in a wonderful utopia and can go back to merrily consuming products without any worry about totalirianism or big brother. No thanks!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Eighteen years ago, the technology to bring us to something like Orwell wrote about wasn't quite there. Now it is -- or nearly is -- and we have reason to worry about Orwell's vision. (Though I'm not all that comfortable using the word ``vision'' as it normally connotates something a lot more positive than what we could get if we're not vigilant.)
And, while I usually think highly of the articles I read in T.R., I have to disagree with this one. First, because I think the author doesn't look deeply enough into those technological advances that he says are liberating. The average citizen may be the first to adopt these new devices but when government takes notice and starts implementing systems or programs around them watch out. For example, small/inexpensive cameras were a boon to ordinary people when it allowed them to monitor their front door or the baby sitter that might be abusing their kids. Now the government is taking more pictures and videos than they can possibly analyze; so many that they now want to use computer systems to scan them to look for certain individuals. How many times was your picture taken today?
Second, look at the top of the T.R. column. ``Technology for Presidents''. Hah, no wonder the tone of the article seemed like nothing more than happy talk. Yep, just go on with all your homeland defense measures. And don't worry about those folks that warn their Orwellian implications. They don't count if it's Democracy(tm) that employs those measures.
Third, he screwed up about the GPS receivers being used in Desert Storm being available at Radio Shack. That might be true today but it wasn't back during Desert Storm. There were commercial C/A-only GPS receivers available back then but they were mostly marine units and weren't the sort of thing that you'd want to be shlepping around the desert. There were some handheld LORAN receivers available back then (maybe at Radio Shack, I can't remember) which came in handy as the Arabian peninsula and surrounding areas had very good LORAN-C coverage. I heard stories of soldiers -- when they found that they'd be advancing across the desert -- asking their wives to run down to the PX to buy one and have it shipped via ASAFP Express to their spouse. All those oil tankers had to use something to stay inside the lines and if it was good enough for them, it ought get you across the desert without too much trouble. Crimeny, where'd he get his facts.
Overall, I give the article a thumbs down.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I always thought Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 hit a little more closer to the target - A society of the future self enslaved through political correctness, the need to conform, and technology enabled diversions from real life.
I don't think the pledge of allegiance is right so we should ban it. The money in the US says "under god" and that offends my atheist beliefs, remove it! I think having homo sex is ok and I'm gonna cram it down your throat MTV style to make sure you know it's ok. I don't think we should target young muslims at the airport as potential terrorists because that would be racist. We should check grandma in the wheelchair instead to show that we are "being fair".
Watch your neighbor! They may be terrorists. Children, do your parents smoke an occasional joint? They are contributing to terrorists! Turn them in. Everyone watching for the inevitable attack by evil doers.
Self enslaved by our willingness to finance any and every shiny bubble that comes along this week. Working check to check to support our conformity. TV, radio, Internet, Mp3 players, walkman, car stereo, cd player, dvd in the SUV, movies, shiny clothes, and $4 quad-frapaccinno lattes laced with happiness prozac pills all working to remove you from reality. Citizen! look up here at these shiny bubbles! Now insert your debit card to see more.
There are two things, closely related, that could can cause the 1984-style world. One of them, as the article correctly pointed out, would be if technology was too expensive to be within reach of the common citizen; having this would make it so that only large, wealthy organizations such as the government could get their hands on the stuff. This, it seems, we don't have to worry about too much; the free-market Western philosophies seem have to helped keep prices down.
The second, more ominous road to 1984 is centralization. The more things become centralized, the fewer powerful entities are needed to collude and walk us down that road. For the most part, so far, this hasn't been a worry, because we have many competing manufacturers of technology, few large multi-state-government cooperations, and a significant, dispersed group of well-educated, free-thinking geeks.
However, with the collapsing of information technology into a couple of roles (you're well out of the norm if you use the internet for anything than HTTP, HTTPS, POP, IMAP, and SMTP over their standard ports), it becomes easy to pass broad, encompassing laws which attempt to lay control over these few avenues. Even the fact that there is one Internet which everyone is expected to be connected to helps make it easier for many software companies to centrally control their dispersed, previously independent products, by having them talk back to central command in real-time (for operations such as registration, remote-disabling, etc). Furthermore, we have single-authority systems such as DNS, overruled by ICANN, providing another source of woes.
In order to be stalwart against falling down this trap, controlled technological homogeny needs to be resisted, and diverse, competing, preferably open technologies (because they promote diversity and competition by their very nature) need to be promoted. What does this mean practically? In the software world, for instance, it means de-facto assumptions such as everyone having MS Word and Windows. It also means resisting efforts that approach the idea of allowing someone to control, from production to consumer sensory inputs, every step of a media feed.
So yes, it's been quite nice so far, and looking at it the right way, you might think it's going to stay that way. But growing centralization and the existance of large, power, multi-national corporations and corporation-conglomerates makes me wonder if it's really going to be that rosy if we just lean back put our feet up.
For more information, I recommend reading Lawrence Lessig's excellent "The Future of Ideas".
Exactly. As it stands now, for the vast majority of the populace, selecting a leader is like deciding which dishwasher detergent to purchase at the grocery store. You have a couple of brands with big, flashy, colorful boxes, that smell the same, look the same, and are probably manufactured by the same company. Want an alternative brand? Sorry, your store doesn't carry those.
People put about that much effort into their decision, too: which of these two mainstream, functionally identical, overblown, similar looking men should I pick for President? Does it matter? No.
Remember Orwell's book is called 2084. It has always been called 2084, and it will always be called 2084.
So things don't go badly in the real 2084, it is very important that we give our full and unconditional love and obedience to our government, the sole defender of freedom in the world. Otherwise, we could face the horrors Orwell wrote about: economic ruin, mass unemployment, global warming, parentless children roaming the streets in packs, cities isolated and divided by attacks on communication infrastructure synchronized with encrypted messages over the very same lines, suitcase nuclear weapons, drug-dealing warlords with more power than a feeble and helpless legitimate government, and so forth.
We need to make sure there is no place for a terrorist like Big Brother to hide.
This attitude is probably one of the most dangerous things out there. The assumption that your being sufficiently uninteresting will keep you from being put under the microscope is short sighted at best. Privacy is not something to be taken lightly. Lots of people have things they would like to hide from prying eyes- especially when those eyes have no legitimate business with them. Would you like things like that nasty, embarassing problem you saw the doctor for last week to be known by anyone that didn't have a need-to-know? What about your screwed up family, and that incident when you were 5 that you still see a counselor for? What about that nasty little habit you have -yes, that one- does the frequency of that need to be known to anyone who thinks they have a need? What about your non-pc views (no, not the ones you talk about - the other ones) that could really cost you in the wrong situation?
Keep in mind that everyone either does things, or has characteristics that others might consider "deviant", and you probably don't know what those things are because they seem normal to you because you take your privacy for granted. Also keep in mind that things that are "normal" now might be "deviant" in the future.
People aren't afraid of the legitimate use of their information. They are afraid of the abuse of priveledged information- and the only way to keep that from happening is to keep it hidden.
I would say that you are delusional to think that you have nothing that could be used against you in the right context.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Technology can be a great thing, but it shouldn't be worshipped without skepticism.
/. all the time, new breakthroughs in science... we'll celebrate in 5 years when that new technology is applied and an actual product is on the shelf.
There is no problem with technology. Technology is neither good nor bad, it is just the application of science. It is the application of the technology that can be good or bad, as you say in the first line. Why celebrate technology at all? We see it on
There was nothing bad about the Germans inventing the rocket during WW2. The problem was they used the rocket to boost warheads towards London. There was nothing bad about encryption, except the Germans used it to secretly communicate plans of war. There is nothing wrong with technology, there is no reason to be skeptical about technology.
It's also the argument driving human cloning. There is nothing good or bad about the technology itself, it's just science and science must go on. Should we be skeptical of the technology itself because it can eventually lead to "organ farms"? Or should we encourage the technology in hopes that good uses such as tissue regeneration becomes a reality and save our skepticism for when someone proposes to build a baby cloning facility?
Yes, there are some instances where we do want to be skeptical why a person/corporation/country is developing certain technologies- Iraq and bio-chemical research is one example. But is there any reason to be skpetical about IBM and their research? About new technologies they develop? I don't think so. As I said before, I wouldn't go cheering word they've developed mondo-capacity memory chips until they were on the market, but being skeptical of the technology itself, that's overkill. Be skeptical of the uses of technology, not the technology itself.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html
"The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places."
:(
"Operation TIPS will be phased in across the country to enable the system to build its capacity to receive an increasing volume of tips."
I'm so glad I live in Canada. Until the tanks roll across the border....
> Karma: Good (mostly affected by moderation done to your comments)
.sig
Since Taco insists on progressively obfuscating karma, I suggest that he go one step further and simply show you an icon of what animal you will be reincarnated as if you continue with your current karmic habits.
And of course, he should support a user preference that allows you to display your destiny with a roguelike symbol, in case you want to turn off image downloads, or brag about your karma in your
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The assumption that presidents need to understand physics (rather than employ well-informed experts as advisors on the subject) and the profession that Jesus used "magic and deception" to pose as the son of God (based on "historical facts and biblical references") makes me wary of his preaching.
While in general, your statement holds to be true, like all rules it has its exceptions.
One very large exception is the growth of technology's effect of the environment. The fact that it used to be, if your TV broke, you took it to the repair shop. Now TV's are so cheap, everybody just gets a new one. Disposable devices ad trinkets are all the rage, now, and their use is growing.
I'm sure that in my lifetime, I will see the introduction of a disposible cellphone. Many other things are now considered this way as well, computer printers, and any other computer device, really. There's no way to fix a trashed video card.
Our rampant consumerism may cause our downfall if we don't stop buying the latest gimmick every time a new one comes out. Try to take a second out of everyday and think, "Do I really need this?"
I know, I know, I preach way to much.
How about the fact that Intel is going to put a radio on every chip? The article doesn't say if it only receives, or can broadcast as well (spyware anyone?).
1984 was written in 1948, and with his number flip he was writing about his own time as well as a future forecast. Remember that the world was divided into three territories, and all were under different, yet very similar systems. He was not just writing about the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, but the UK and United States, where in 1948, blacks in the South couldn't vote, couldn't marry white people, could only use "colored" facilities and so forth.
The article says "we watched democracy and liberty spread (like a plague--to Communists) first through the Soviet satellites and then into the heart of the Soviet Union itself." This is a very simple-minded and naive view of Russia. Russians were able to vote since 1917 in elections - true for only one party, but in the US is there an alternative to the Republicrats? George Washington himself discouraged seperate political parties. Let's look at the "democratic and free" Russia now. One of the first things that happened was the Tsar was exhumed and given a state funeral - not a good sign. Then the socialist bureaucracy who controlled the means of production became the capitalists who controlled the means of production. Who are the new Russian rich? The old socialist bureaucracy! At least in the old system they didn't pass on their privilege generation to generation. Nowadays, an ex-KGB head runs Russia (Putin) and he's been censoring the press recently. Where's the uproar in the West? This MIT article is as much spoonfed propaganda as they had in the Soviet Union. It will only make sense if you're used to nodding and going along with "the party line". I live near a Russian ex-pat community, and they do not have these fantasies about how Russia magically went from a horrible evil empire in 1988 to a wonderful free democracy where everything is perfect by 1992, or 2002. I'll believe the people who've been there over this almost sickening propaganda and over-simplification. The reality is things were better (although with problems) than is implied before 1990, and are worse than explicitly said they are, after 1990. If any Slashdotter wants to find out about Russia, stop reading what people from MIT or the White House say and find a real, live person who lived in Russia during the 80's and 90's and ask them.
Michael Harrington, a student of the poor in America, once said "If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery." I tend to agree with this position. Unlike decades ago, I have had to undergo the humiliation of a urine test multiple times in order to get a job so I can continue eating and have a roof over my head. I even had to be fingerprinted with the fingerprints sent to the FBI twice - once for a city job, once for a financial job. Every street I walk down has security cameras gazing at me, and every store I walk into has security gates that electromagnetically scan me. My communications over the phone and over the Internet are open to a variety of monitoring, this has always been the case with my international communications, with the PATRIOT act it means virtually anything.
1984 has come to pass, and like in the book, they are continually refining the technique. If people sit around and just let it happen, it will get worse and worse. The only solution is to organize and fight it. CPSR and EFF help fight some of this technological encroachment, and there are other groups that fight other technological encroachment - NORML for urine tests (the Supreme court just ruled public schools can test students in any extracurricular activity, sports or no, for drugs) and many other groups. The only way these things get better by is by organizing together and doing something about it. There are no big victories, big changes are always just the accumulation of many small victories. Like-minded people organizing together to fight for the democracy and liberty as the article said are the only means of achieveing real liberty and democracy, one step at a time.
It seems to me that most people miss the biggest (yet veiled) point in 1984. Orwell was against organized religion, thats who the bad guys really were. Yes its about power, but not technological power. Its about mind control. Mind control of the type the Church has. Look in the book and you will see they convince their captors that 2+2=5 *and* that god is powerful.
Since 1948, however, a new form of social control has emerged. Some of you may recognize the name. It's called capitalism. The illusion of choice created by being able to choose from 25 kinds of peanut butter and 500 cable channels is a far more effective way of quelling revolt than systematically cutting down political oppostion. But political oppostion has been cut down all the same.
The capitalist system has so deeply entrenched itself that two things have occurred. First, those who suggest that there should be alternatives for everyone are labelled as "Commies" or "Dirty Hippies" and largely ignored. So, collective oppostion is nearly impossible. Secondly, it is next to impossible for a person (at least someone in a G8/G7 nation) to live outside of the capitalist system. Self-sufficient farming requires land, which requires property tax, which requires income. If you sell your product to pay your taxes, you cannot be self-sufficient but turn into a for-profit farmer. Vicious circle.
Orwell wasn't as wrong as the article would have us believe. Technology as used by the capitalist system did enable social control, but not in the way Orwell thought.
-asreal
What Future?
> Of course, you neglect to mention that Indians started the custom of scalping.
Uh, no. Wrong again.
No, actually he's right. Scalping was a tradition of some indian tribes for centuries before the European s came over. Yes there was an attempt at revisionist history for a while with the whole "noble savage" thing, but it has been soundly debunked.
As far as murder and torture of prisoners go, the Indians take the cake. Look at the Mochtes, the Aztecs atc. Yes, I know they're South/central American, but torture to death of prisoners was more the rule than the exception throughout the Americas.
Not that this excuses the atrocities commited against the indians, but before you make some ignorant comment like "Wrong again", you might actually want to be right in the future.
It is somewhat disappointing that a UC Prof. can write an essay on Orwell without apparently knowing this elementary fact.
Orwell was not making a prophecy, he thought that the USSR would eventually be beaten the same way the NAZI party was. The point of the book was to make people aware that 'Uncle Joe' as he was then called was not the nice guy who saved Britain from Hitler but a monster.
Other facts US authors commonly miss out when they write about Orwell is that he was a socialist, he wrote the 1945 Labor party manifesto. Endless fun can be had at parties getting a libertarian twit to go off on a rant and then tell him that.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The reason the government doesn't keep track of everybody's moves now is because that kind of surveillance is expensive and labor intensive. What happens when technology makes it cheap enough to spy on everyone? Sure, facial recognition that works and microrobotic cameras are far off in the future. But what about a giant data-mining computer that cross references a few things like say... telephone calling records, mobile phone coordinates, credit card purchases, and the toll-road transponder in your car? You leave a paper trail everywhere you go.
Everyone who is really interested in how technology affects personal freedom should really read the following book.
The Mode of Information By Mark Poster
The chapter on Foucault and Databases is the one that has struck me as the most telling on the subject of personal liberties.
The key concept is that of the Super-Panopticon. The Panopticon is a design for a prison. The prison is designed as an octagonal tower. The cells are all along the inside surface of the tower, guard posts in the center. Each cell is equipped with one-way glass allowing the guards to see in, but not allowing the prisoners to see out. Prisoner behavior is therefore controlled by the knowledge that they may be observed at any time without knowing whether they are being observed.
Poster points out that the information collected about each person in the high-tech age is all put into databases. Where they shop, what they buy, what books they read, what movies they see, what sites they surf on the web, etc, etc. The fact that all this information is available to the State if the State chooses to access it.
Thus, like the panopticon-prison, control is exerted by the State as each citizen knows that the information can be accessed but does not know if it is being accessed.
This is how totalitarianism creeps in thru today's technology. The Super-Panopticon is a passive control system for the masses, made possible by the availability of stored personal information.
In 1984 Orwell writes that one never knew if there was anyone watching at the other end of the telescreen, but it was always advisable to act as if there were.
Today the telescreen is invisible, but no less there for all of that. The original totalitarian states may be gone, but today's quasi-representative governments have gained the means to impose their own kind of control.
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
It was only after a decade of national wars, civil wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions in all parts of the world that Ingsoc and its rivals emerged as fully worked-out political theories. But they had been foreshadowed by the various systems, generally called totalitarian, which had appeared earlier in the century, and the main outlines of the world which would emerge from the prevailing chaos had long been obvious. What kind of people would control this world had been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bereaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monoploy industry and centralized government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past agees, thew were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and above all, more concious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparision with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient ... With the development of television, and the technical advace which made it possible to recieve and transmit simutaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen ... could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda.
Monopoly industry: Multinational clothing, fuel, automobile, electronic, food production and retail. Is there anything of substance tha people use that is not produced by four or five companies in the world? Mosanto, big oil, Intel, Motorola, even Nokia, Ford (realy sucks). Media consolidation is even more frightening. Consider that there are only five music publishers in the world and that all others are prevented from vending in "their" stores. Your local paper gets most of it's prolefeed from the AP, and it's being destroyed by the larger papers. The internet will soon be owned by a few select and unregulated companies and you will not be a part of it. The more prevalent the new media becomes it seems the less open it is becoming as:
There is terrible growing itollerance. Witness Micro$oft's prediction that all computers will run their software and no one else's in the near future. Witness the rest of the world acting in a similar fashion and comming to think of eliminating competition as a normal business practice. Beware of those who play zero sum games, they are the ones who manufacture artificial scarcities now and desire them in the future as a means to crush others. How else can you gaurd your relative position, exept to make what you have scarce and highly desired. The whole concept of public service and making new things to solve old problems and expand everone's resources is endangered by these silly neo-Darwinian business school people. Have you seen what cruelty passes as humor these days? It's not as bad as bombing a boat load of women and children, but it's getting there.
We have yet to have our next big waves of war, but you can see it comming and the results are likely to be as Owell predicted. The traditional powers not listed in the future are landed aristocracy, philanthopists, clergy. Their power is already dissapearing, replaced by the central governments the itollerant are producing.
The technology to monitor citezens is in place and will be used by those who come to power after the wars. Europe will be obliterated, as will much of the US north east, California, and all other hubs of central government. The new power will be decentralized by nuclear necessity, hence a collective oligarchy. They will claim ownership of your Socialist Movement (hence the name Orwel uses, English Socialism, INGSOC) and grind to dust all of it's points but the necessity of itself to be in power. The war will become perpetual and the powers that be will bomb their own populations to keep them working at a feverish and obedient pace. The majority of goods produced by this society will be wasted, the point being to command not to enrich, elevate or ennoble. All print publications will cease under austerity measures, and you will be left with no means of comparison. In time, after the compete destruction of education and language, you will not even be able to understand anything is wrong.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel ENGSOC. It's so true and you don't even have to be from the UK to see it. All you have to do is read and understand a few select works of Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London, an early work, shows Orwell's underlying belief in humanity's common attributes. Hommage to Catalonia shows early dissalusionment with that nature. There he describes the utter corruption of Communists, Socialists, Fascists and Anarchists alike. Burmeese Days shows Orwell's fear of Empire and his insight into the way people exploit "others" while making themselves misserable to persue abstract, empty and unsatisfying goals. 1984 and Animal Farm are a tour de force, cementing all that he had learned into very compact and entertaining storries. Orwell started out a Socialist, but he died a libertairian hating all but the most liberal forms of government.
Have fun at your next party, and stay infected with liberalism. I suggest a weekly read of the US Bill of Rights, a yearly read of Orwell, a judicious study of Greek and Latin literature (all translated to your language!), even their French and English Enlightenment echos are useful and interesting, a lifetime of New Testament reading, and above all less abuse of your fellow man. We are all in this together. For humor, try non-sequetors, puns and other harmless fun.
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a bannanna.
Get it?
Good, there are no clowns in 1984. As long as I see them and they are not all cruel, there is hope.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Who is "they"?
The thousands of tribal elders who conviened at the Loya Jirga two months ago and unanimously nominated Karzai for president - who the fuck did you think I was talking about. I know damn well the average person in Afghanistan doesn't have a vote. It's not a democracy there - this is their traditional form of governance, and I don't have a problem with it, I don't think we need to cram democracy down anyone's throats, do you? Lest we be accused of cultural imperialism. - it's certainly not a dictatorship.
Have you ever trained a dog?
(insanely stupid example follows. .
We're not talking about an individual dog, here. We're talking about an incredibly ethnically diverse, fragmented, traumatized, and poor population here.
Fuck, has Saddam Hussein sat on command for us? After 10 years of getting swatted on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper? No, he has the balls to stand up to the pressure the international community has agreed to place upon him. Sure, his people suffer. What money he DOES get ahold of, he uses for gold plated bricks for his presidential palaces instead of food for his malnurished children, then he turns around and blames the sanctions.
"Bow wow! I'm shitting on the rug because you keep hitting me with that rolled up newspaper. It's not my fault. I don't control my behavior, you do. Give me some good doggie treats or I'm gonna chew up your shoes too!"
You state this argument as if people were animals that respond only to operant conditioning, and do not think for themselves, or act on strong personal conviction.
This is a population that has not only been thinking for themselves, but the average Joe is usually an experienced fighter with an AK-47 under his bed, and has been used to fighting wars from liberation of his country to fending off bandits to inter-tribal conflicts for the past 30 years. They sure as hell think and fight for themselves - I don't believe for one minute that if there were people unhappy with the, as you put it, "US-friendly government" - they'd have it forcibly removed. In fact, there's already a great deal of conflict in that direction, partially by Taliban supporters who liked the old system better and partially by tribal warlords who want to become something a bit more than that, or who liked the old system where the government turned a blind eye while they robbed people at will.
Of course, those that are going along with the current government may be happy about getting US or IMF money, may be happy that we helped them kick out the Taliban, may be happy that their women can walk down the street unafraid of being beaten when a stray breeze blows the hem of their burqua up 3" and exposes their sexy ankles. Maybe they're happy that they're free to start a business selling books or renting videos. Maybe they're happy at the prospect of law and order after 30 years of tribal warlords firing rockets into densely populated cities. Is there anything wrong with that? Tell me, because I don't see it. Does that mean that we're brainwashing them? Controlling them like puppets on strings? Oh gosh, we MUST be, because we're the evil US and never do anything unless it's specifically directed at controlling our client-states, protecting our interests, and above all, stealing money from the poor, which is what we like best.
No, you and the majority of the public have been resting for far too long. Turn off the television and open your eyes and ears to the rest of the world. Read about U.S. foreign policy. Investigate the actions of your elected officials. If you want to sleep through life, that is your choice, but don't whine when I won't lie down for the slaughter with you.
Ah yes, the alleged "hidden agenda" "great conspiracy theory" deal. I assume that the Bilderburg group is all behind this, in league with the Zionists, that the mainstream press is all lies because they're controlled by a tiny 9 separate, competing (but secretly colluding) corporations, and that underground sources are SOOOOO hard to find that I'm just a poor deluded doggie that sits for treats like all the good US citizens and puppet government regimes across the earth.
So fuck you. I do read independent news sources, I do research the actions of my "elected" officials, and they're not perfect, nor is our system of government, and I know when I'm being lied to, and I know I'm being lied to a lot. But the things you're saying, as I said before, are just as far from the truth as what comes out of Jar Jar Bush's mouth, they're the same tired anti-West propaganda that's been coming out of the Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Nation of Islam, and every other bunch of sour apples for the past 40-50 years. They can't get a leg-up in competition, so they make up this bullshit story about how people can't make their own decisions and how everyone is controlled by money, and are poor opressed slaves by some evil conspiracy or imperialist hegemony. Bah!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.