1984 (Week 12)

December 11, 2015

Orwell has really had me thinking about the simple everyday activities that humans participate in. Something as simple as an enlightening conversation with a friend can be easily controlled by changing the dynamics of a language. People come and go, exchanging different strings of sounds and letters in order to portray thoughts to others to understand. That is an extremely complex concept if you think about. And rather fascinating. As Syme was describing to Winston about how Newspeak would remove the possibilities of describing certain thoughts and feelings by simplifying ideas to black and white concepts (like simply adding an -un prefix to a positive word to create only one negative), I realized how much power the government can truly have over its people. Honestly, that scares me. Especially because the government does have that kind of power today. Also mentioned in the novel, the government is engaging in constant surveillance of civilians and silently following those who seem like a 'threat' to society. And I have no idea what terms would exactly classify someone as a 'threat' either, so the thought is unsettling.

Here's what I'm trying to understand: does the power and amount of control of the government change as technology changes? I understand that terrorist attacks on the United States would obviously cause some shifts in the government's behavior with the people (as our own citizens can potentially be terrorists), but what if technology hadn't been as advanced as it is now? Would we still be watched in other ways, or would it not happen at all? If 9/11 hadn't occurred at all, with this same type of technology, would the government still feel compelled to watch over us as much as they do today? Maybe so, as Orwell had foreseen a society like this back in 1948, way before any of these things had shown signs of occurring...

Just a little food for thought.