The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? read more

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2011: A Brave New Dystopia

“You had to live – you did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” -Winston Smith worries in George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984.” All Winston yearns for is a place outside of the all-seeing electronic eye of the Telescreen, a private place that Big Brother’s penetrating gaze can’t reach.So Winston picks up a journal on the black market, a “thoughtcrime” he knows will sign his own death warrant. read more

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Privacy is Passe, So Broadcast Yourself (to Big Brother)

In 1946, a year after the end of World War II, George Orwell had already buried Hitler, at least linguistically, in his famous essay ” Politics and the English Language “: “Fascism has no meaning now except so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” Orwell’s point is not just that the word fascism was out of vogue, that the term was so commonly used as to render it hopelessly meaningless, read more

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Let’s Bury Hitler