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03/27/2009: "The public voluntarily comply with many Orwellian developments"
Jade Goody was propelled to a very strange form of modern stardom by the reality TV show Big Brother, and even learned of the cancer that finally claimed her life last weekend on the Indian version of that programme. The title of the show was Orwellian. But what the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four could never have predicted is that the citizens would subject themselves to the scrutiny of the cameras voluntarily. The deeper threat to human dignity in 2009 is not state surveillance but pathological exhibitionism.
In so many respects, what Orwell foretold has come to pass - with the crucial difference that it has been embraced by consumers not imposed upon them by the totalitarian state. The controversy over Google Street View in recent days has been more than matched by excitement at the technological wizardry that enables us to see eye-level panoramic images of places all over the world. It is a service provided by an internet search giant, not a sinister intrusion by the Thought Police. Orwell envisaged language drained of poetry and passion by the state's imposition of Newspeak. In the event, it was the citizens themselves who invented this lifeless shorthand, in the text language that now routinely appears in the examination papers of our teenagers. As for the Junior Spies of Nineteen Eighty-Four, today’s children are already culturally primed to berate their parents for smoking, breaching environmental guidelines, or buying products that are not Fairtrade. The state does not have to get involved.
[ The ability to make Heaven seem like Hell and Hell like Heaven makes the public cooperate with a tyranny that oppresses them while convincing them it is doing them a favor. ]
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/3472786/nineteen-eightyfour-yes-please.thtml