George Orwell 1984

[JWT]

As I work on the outline for my next sci-fi novel, I keep coming back to Orwell’s 1984.

It was published almost 80 years ago, yet people still reference it whenever governments, surveillance, censorship or manipulation of information make the news.

How close do you think we actually are to Orwell’s vision?

Are concepts like constant surveillance, changing language and social conformity becoming reality, or is 1984 now used as a catch-all comparison for things Orwell never imagined?

Which parts of the novel do you think proved remarkably accurate, and which parts missed the mark?

I’d be interested to hear whether you think 1984 has become more relevant with time, or whether another dystopian novel is a better guide to the world we’re living in today.

If you had to recommend one dystopian novel that best reflects the world of 2026, would it be 1984, or would you choose something else?

Looking forward to your thoughts

John Westley Turnbull

[Quoth]

His 1984 was about Governments that already existed in 1948, as was Animal Farm.

He started as a Communist but saw what the Soviet backed groups were doing in the Spanish Civil war (executing socialists!) and became a Socialist.

Stalin literally airbrushed people out of images and created fake history.

[nana77]

1Q84: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Q84
Personally, I don't really give a f*, but survellaince and stalking are two things that differs, imho.
What I really don't like about it is the vile mood one takes within that, 'cause ain't facing confrontations.

[JWT]

To answer my own question, and without deliberately getting involved in today’s politics, I think some aspects of Orwell’s 1984 seem remarkably prescient, including, but certainly not limited to:

Fear as a political tool, where governments and media can use public anxiety to encourage compliance or attract attention.

Mass surveillance through CCTV, smartphones, location tracking, facial recognition and the vast amounts of personal data collected by governments and technology companies. The sheer volume of information that can now be gathered about ordinary people would have been almost unimaginable when Orwell wrote 1984.

Social conformity. Are there not parallels between Orwell’s state-enforced conformity and the pressures created today by social media, online outrage and public shaming?

Whether Orwell intended these exact parallels is open to debate, but I find it fascinating how often 1984 is still used to describe aspects of modern society.

The novel I’m currently outlining draws on some of these ideas, which is probably why I’ve found myself thinking about Orwell again.

John Westley Turnbull

[nana77]

May I argue that, whenewer that's real (and it is) anyone can't blame anything by ownself, 'cause to shut it down it's just one button (or not having a TV at all, or well.... I don't think it takes that much not to fullfill the 10 minuts of spare time by watching and scrolling, compulsively posts).
To me every minute of absolute silence values billions, billions of dollars. Will not exchange that for any.

[Ricky D'Angelo]

Originally Posted by JWT

. . . I’d be interested to hear whether you think 1984 has become more relevant with time, or whether another dystopian novel is a better guide to the world we’re living in today. . .

Gotta go for Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for right now for all the alleged destruction of books for whatever pretext.

[hildea]

Some more dystopias which feel uncomfortably relevant:

Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler, 1993): Climate change, social inequality, and unchecked capitalism causes collapse of society. People live in small communities vulnerable to raids from criminal gangs, or give up their freedom to become indentured workes under the protection of big corporations.

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985): Women have lost all legal and political rights, and fertile women are forced to bear children for the ruling classes. Queer people are executed.

Kodemus - or The computer who thought “What the hell” (Tor Åge Bringsværd, 1968, short story in Norwegian): Everybody have a small computer, a Little Brother, which you carry around everywhere, and which helpfully tells you what to do so you don’t have to think for yourself. When the protagonist loses his Little Brother, he breaks down, unable to make any desicions.

Murderbot series (Martha Wells, 2017): Huge corporations have (almost) all power, and there’s widespread slavery, unconsensual experiments on thinking beings, and intrusive surveillance everywhere.

And a couple of social media posts which can be read as very condensed dystopias:

Originally Posted by Alex Blechman (2021)

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.

Originally Posted by Adrian Bott (2015)

‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

[rjwse@aol.com]

Imagine prevalence of brain computer interfaces enabling person-to-person communication. It cuts through sound and foreign language acquisition for extreme precision and speed. Now with clarity and precision all mental traffic includes actual imagery of EXACTLY what you mean to express, even including emotional content. You can 'hear' recorded music with absolute clarity, 'see' transmitted or recorded visual static or moving pictures overlaid onto your eyes. Zones of QR codes automatically broadcast info upon approach. No more dials, switches, buttons, on/off, meters on anything because this is all now volitional, an every-man's fiat lux sort of world. Nobody knows any language. Nobody knows how to read or write or how to speak due to it now being inefficient, slow, imprecise. Now it is so easy to direct control of malcontents and criminals by containment of not just their behavior, but actually their thought content. What a scope for ushering in totalitarianism. Recording and retransmission of thought includes false ideation, false memories, memory erasure, false conclusions leading to well-controlled populous without dissent.

[Pajamaman]

I reread a bit of it recently, and I was shocked how prescient it is. One bit that hit me was that the TV that watches you can read and interpret what you are thinking by the expressions on your face. This seems to me to be AI and surveillance, and for sure where we are going.

Also his discussion of cognitive dissonance, 2+2=5, etc, is very pertinent, but that has always existed.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

Imagine prevalence of brain computer interfaces enabling person-to-person communication. It cuts through sound and foreign language acquisition for extreme precision and speed. Now with clarity and precision all mental traffic includes actual imagery of EXACTLY what you mean to express, even including emotional content. You can 'hear' recorded music with absolute clarity, 'see' transmitted or recorded visual static or moving pictures overlaid onto your eyes. Zones of QR codes automatically broadcast info upon approach. No more dials, switches, buttons, on/off, meters on anything because this is all now volitional, an every-man's fiat lux sort of world. Nobody knows any language. Nobody knows how to read or write or how to speak due to it now being inefficient, slow, imprecise. Now it is so easy to direct control of malcontents and criminals by containment of not just their behavior, but actually their thought content. What a scope for ushering in totalitarianism. Recording and retransmission of thought includes false ideation, false memories, memory erasure, false conclusions leading to well-controlled populous without dissent.

AFAIK there is no evidence of this technology, no progress in this direction. The internal world of consciousness and external empiricism remain utterly separate. Indeed, no external empirical proof of consciousness exists. It's fun in a book, but it has no grounding in science.

[rjwse@aol.com]

AFAIK there is no evidence of this technology, no progress in this direction. The internal world of consciousness and external empiricism remain utterly separate. Indeed, no external empirical proof of consciousness exists. It's fun in a book, but it has no grounding in science.

It is called fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imagery) You can 'think' of a hammer and the technician correctly says the subject is visualizing a hammer. They can route what a cat sees, interpret the signal, recreate a raster scan of it and a monitor will show you what the cat sees on screen through thalamus, tectum, cingulate gyrus, and visual cortex. In a strange manner cats see people as feline visually. In time, court rooms will be able to show just exactly what the witness saw. All this is actually cooking right now; whether it will become way-prevalent is anybody's guess. Shameless plug: read my book. It's a dandy yarn about how still-yet-another kind of totalitarianism can come about.

[Pajamaman]

From what I read, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imagery) maps activity within parts of the brain. There is no suggestion that the viewed activity can be translated into images or words. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[rjwse@aol.com]

From what I read, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imagery) maps activity within parts of the brain. There is no suggestion that the viewed activity can be translated into images or words. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It is ongoing cutting edge, real research. Shameless plug: read my book.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

It is ongoing cutting edge, real research. Shameless plug: read my book.

It does not touch on the divide between empiricism and consciousness. There has been zero progress on this front. But it's fun to imagine and read and write about.

[rjwse@aol.com]

I agree with you. Your consciousness is an illusion.