digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About
See the original image at dailymail.co.uk

60 years after Orwell wrote 1984...almost reality

dailymail.co.uk — 60 years after Orwell wrote 1984 and was destroyed by the book, a chilling reminder that his sinister vision is almost reality

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 14, 2009

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

264 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • benchen14, on 06/14/2009, -8/+287Huxley was right.

    http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1736/200905amusin ...
  • judicar, on 06/14/2009, -17/+198If you think 1984 is almost a reality you haven't read the book.
  • zyklon, on 06/14/2009, -10/+172Not surprisingly, 1984 isn't as much of a reality as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. We're definitely on the path toward amusing ourselves to death, rather than giving in to the police state as describe by Orwell. Either way, 1984 is definitely showing its teeth in London. All those CCTV cameras must make people scared to sleep.
  • TechnoRabbit, on 06/14/2009, -12/+161A lot closer. We don't have cameras in every room of our house, we don't have people disappearing in the night because their children ratted on them, we don't have mandatory hate speeches we all have to listen to, there are more than three countries, and I won't get taken away and brainwashed if I post right now that I hate the current leader of my nation (even though I don't... would have been true if Bush was still in office). Oh, and we don't have a new language being forced down our throats that limit our ability to come up with thought. Netspeak is pretty close, though.
  • Kastang, on 06/14/2009, -12/+159War is peace
    Freedom is slavery
    Ignorance is strength
  • TechnoRabbit, on 06/14/2009, -6/+86By the way, it really annoys me when people go, 'omg, we're so close to 1984' when clearly they didn't understand what 1984 was about. It was about control. Thought control. The surveillance was a means to an end, a way to make sure your thought control was working. They were coming up with a new language to limit your thought processes, they constantly edited the past to make it seem like the present is so much better than it is even though it's steadily getting worse. And the hero, Winston, is the exception to the rule. In 1984 the vast majority of people were happy with the world. Winston, a person unhappy with it, was extremely rare and would be killed if he'd been found out (though in the end he's brainwashed, not killed).

    We are nowhere near 1984 and that's why it's so important to fight right now before it even gets close, because if it gets close, it's too late.
  • maz2331, on 06/14/2009, -5/+79That is doubleplusungood.
  • inactive, on 06/14/2009, -9/+77The UK is like 1984.

    Cameras everywhere. There are cctv tv cameras that shout commands at you if you misbehave - well there are in my city (Nottingham).

    GRIM.
  • TechnoRabbit, on 06/14/2009, -11/+65You are taking a square peg and trying your hardest to ram it into a round hole three sizes too small.

    Nice anti-Obama speech, because, clearly, Obama is so much more 1984-causing than Bush was. You're just a troll trying to push his political agenda and using hyperbole to do it.
  • Laughto, on 06/14/2009, -12/+59I'm sorry, but whoever's writing the introduction to the new edition of 1984 cites The Daily Mail? A sad day, indeed, considering they are Britain's very own Ministry of Truth.

    Anyway, didn't Orwell say 1984 was a vision of the present when he wrote it not a never-ending prediction for the future? Papers telling us we're almost in 1984 is getting tiresome, especially considering it mostly comes down to "Ahhh, people are able to see us in public!"
  • GrammerPants, on 06/14/2009, -2/+48I'm sure most people don't even notice them, or care. It is usually the case with these things you have a minority that screams and yells at the injustice and the rest of the people simply do not care.
  • NebCanuck, on 06/14/2009, -3/+49Which parallels 1984 perfectly.
  • Striker101, on 06/13/2009, -22/+59Interesting things I never knew of Orwell.

    But "almost" reality? How much closer can we get?
  • jlian, on 06/14/2009, -1/+38Digged for using Newspeak goodwise.
  • Pinkertinkle, on 06/14/2009, -3/+37He shoulda checked behind that picture frame the first time he banged that broad there.
  • inactive, on 06/14/2009, -18/+51Obama is change
  • dwhitbeck, on 06/14/2009, -2/+34Newspeak is certainly alive and well, especially in politics.
  • iDoraemon, on 06/14/2009, -11/+40The title "60 years after Orwell wrote 1984...almost reality" is very accurate. It's the very fact that books like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenhei 471 were written that we are aware of such futures, and which strives us to prevent them from happening.

    In other words, had 1984 not been written, we may very well have been living a true 1984 scenario already. People say that we're getting there, but as long as people know the price of dystopia, those futures will never be realized. The characters in those books didn't have such insight until it was too late.
  • lemur2000, on 06/14/2009, -0/+28I remember when I read Brave New World in highschool, a lot of the kids in my class thought that the world sounded really good, and some of them kind of wanted it to happen. It was quite depressing.
  • JonHs, on 06/13/2009, -7/+33http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/1984.php
  • RonPauls, on 06/14/2009, -6/+31A government big enough to give you everything you want...
  • DiggMeUpPlz, on 06/14/2009, -1/+24That sounds like a statement from someone acting superior.
  • cjsmith87, on 06/14/2009, -12/+33And Ron Paul is the Revolution
  • arobicha, on 06/14/2009, -1/+21I'm a firm believer in "you reap what you sow". You can sit here and bitch about how your government is slowly destroying your freedoms, you can claim your life is being controlled by whoever happens to be in power, or you can go about your life trying to improve upon the status quo. Only one course of action will yield results.
  • inactive, on 06/14/2009, -2/+21In england they are about to launch a network of camera that track car number plates accross the entire country.

    All phone calls and emails are going to be held.

    They have more CCTV cameras than there are people in Ireland. which are controlled by Police in Underground bunkers.

    They Want national ID card to be mandatory and contain biometric data.

    Oh its certainly not heading any other way.
  • ghatid, on 06/14/2009, -1/+20Right, the fact that everyone can still bitch and moan, which is what we all do:), proves that we aren't that close to what Orwell described in 1984. Once you find that the government is making sure you don't bitch and moan, then you can bitch and moan about how we're at 1984 (though it'll be too late).
  • richmomz, on 06/14/2009, -4/+22Good article, and I would go even further to say that our world is actually becoming a hybrid of Orwell's 1984, and Huxley's lesser known but probably even more prescient 'Brave New World'.
  • supersirj, on 06/14/2009, -0/+17http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amu ...
  • taikyokuken, on 06/14/2009, -1/+18Please remember, that America does not equal the world. As for America, yes I think Huxley's fears have come to fruition more. As for Orwell: China, North Korea, London's CCTV cameras.
  • inactive, on 06/14/2009, -6/+23We aren't exactly at 1984, but no doubt that Orwell is rolling in his grave.
  • Laughto, on 06/14/2009, -1/+17hmm think I jumped the gun in the first part of that comment. it's actually a really well thought out, balanced essay on the subject. It being on The Daily Mail website threw me, I guess.
  • GawtMilk, on 06/14/2009, -6/+21This argument doesn't wash with me. There is a difference between the big, bad, evil government "forcing" safer cars and health care down our throats (while I didn't vote for Obama, he won, indicating that the majority of the public support his policies), and the big bad evil government forcing cameras into your rooms and making you support them through recitations of hate speech.

    In one case, the government is trying to support its people, in the other, the government is trying to crush any uprisings in the populace.

    I guess it is a question of political legitimacy. Our government was elected by a democratic majority and Obama is doing what his supporters want. That's different from 1984, where this was clearly not the case.
  • Klowner, on 06/14/2009, -1/+16The link works, and it's a link to a google video that's been up for 2 years now which suggests it inhabits some form of legal existence..

    Not to mention lame old Blockbuster Online dropped it from their rental library while it was IN MY QUEUE a couple years ago. *puts on foil hat*
  • yocouchdigga, on 06/14/2009, -2/+16lol'd

    username is very fitting too.
  • meridian, on 06/14/2009, -2/+16Orgy Porgy, god now I remember why I liked Brave New World so much more than 1984.
  • maz2331, on 06/14/2009, -6/+19Don't ask.
  • maz2331, on 06/14/2009, -23/+36Alex Jones is not credible at all.
  • HandsOfNod, on 06/14/2009, -1/+13*Fahrenheit 451
  • SalmonGod, on 06/14/2009, -2/+14I'm surprised there's no mention of William Gibson here, or the cyberpunk genre in general. I think that novels like Neuromancer are closer to the truth so far. Corporate control, massive abstraction of reality and overbearing media interaction with all aspects of daily life. There's a general angst or tension amongst most of the population, but most are too burnt out to do anything about it and/or too lost to know where or how to direct their energies.

    I was having a conversation with a couple people I'd just met last year, talking about stagnation in the movie industry. I asked why some genres are almost completely overlooked, such as cyberpunk. One of them made the excellent observation that perhaps cyberpunk is getting just a little too close to the truth these days, and nobody wants to confront the idea.
  • CATSCEO2, on 06/14/2009, -1/+12Your user name is perfect.
  • ray4389, on 06/14/2009, -6/+16Obama is furthering what Bush did. I see no plus side to him. Ron Paul all the way.
  • JaseFace, on 06/14/2009, -5/+15The U.S. doesn't "come close." Whatever faults the government has, the average American's ignorance is his own fault, not the government's. All the information is out there, people just willfully choose to not look for it, or disregard it.
  • SalmonGod, on 06/14/2009, -10/+20Take a good look at China or North Korea.

    The majority of Chinese youth don't even know about Tianenman Square. They thought control pretty well over there.

    The U.S. comes close. Most Americans aren't as aware as they should be of how the U.S. rose to power, or why we face the problems we do today. How quickly have most Americans forgotten that we trained and equipped the major terrorist leaders we're supposed to be fighting today, or that we put Saddam in power? How many people in power find it incredibly convenient that most people haven't put these pieces of the puzzle together?

    The thought control isn't as complete or aesthetically comparable, but the effects are strikingly similar.
  • SalmonGod, on 06/14/2009, -1/+10@JaseFace

    Of course. We live in the information age. Mass communication. You can't just gather up books and burn them anymore. Things have changed. Some places still have a culture in place which allows for direct destruction and silencing of dissent.

    American authority has to go out of its way a little further. If America tried to pull crap the way China did, people would be up in arms in an instant. Culturally, we're just not there yet. Instead, our mass media is used to distract and confuse. When the mass media is focusing on tragedy, crisis, condemnation, and paranoia, that's what will be important to the masses, not a few scholars shouting in the background about how we're only repeating the same mistakes which led to our troubles in the first place. They don't silence those people, they just make them irrelevant to the masses.

    Haven't you noticed that every time there's some dire situation that explodes in the mass media, we learn a few months or years later that at the exact same time something worse was being slipped under the table? Then when somebody tries to point out people's ignorance of the situation, someone like you can step in and defend by pointing out how the information was out there, people just weren't paying attention.
  • evergrim, on 06/14/2009, -3/+12What change? What does that even mean? "Change" can mean all things to all people.

    Even worse is the mind numbing chant: "Yes we can!". That's from a frikkin children's TV show.
  • Impius, on 06/14/2009, -1/+102+2=5
  • Smokeydabear, on 06/14/2009, -1/+9Yeah I'm sure the thought police are busy recording my every move since I bought that journal with creamy paper from the thrift store window.
  • joshikus, on 06/14/2009, -3/+11Join the Revolution
  • mikemx7f, on 06/14/2009, -1/+9Yeah, all three members.
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 100 of 274 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.