NCEA 3.4 – Writing Portfolio – Feature Article

With tens of millions of copies sold, and published in over 65 languages, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the most far-reaching dystopias ever written. Despite how well known his words are today, it appears that as a collective we have not paid any attention to the warnings that Orwell has presented to us.

As we read the novel 72 years after it’s publication, we would like to think that Orwell writes of a distant society, one that has little relevance to our own lives today. In truth, to believe this statement would be to fool yourself. Too many of Orwell’s warnings have become a reality for us to observe the text from a comfortable distance, and while some parallels have been recognised, others remain unaccounted for. A key concern that Orwell presents involves surveillance, and how this can be utilised to maintain totalitarian control. His fears manifest as a plea to readers to wake up and be prepared to take preventative action, but what has instead occurred is that the level of surveillance that envelops our society has slowly and silently infiltrated our lives until it has reached Orwellian levels. In addition to this, we now accept our monitored lives as the norm instead of the terrifying future Orwell and others of his time believed it to be. In light of this realisation, it is imperative that we take an honest look at the public and private surveillance in the novel compared to now, and how we have passively allowed this to be achieved.

In Orwell’s fictional society Oceania, the government exhibits an enormous desire for control and power. This is demonstrated in the extent to which it’s citizens are surveilled. In all aspects of the public arena, even out in the countryside where no one lives, “There was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognised.” The government seeks to infiltrate all locations where private conversation could be held, in order to observe any deviation from what they perceive to be acceptable behaviour. As readers we deem this a clear breach of personal privacy, and yet we often forget to consider that the CCTV cameras present in our own parks, shops and streets can gain a much larger degree of our information than we are prepared to admit. In New Zealand’s largest city Auckland, there are over 5500 publicly-funded cameras that could be observing your actions at any moment in time, and this number does not include those privately owned [1]. A quick internet search for ‘webcams near me’ reveals plenty of evidence for a level of public surveillance that Orwell would deem unacceptable. While these mechanisms can be useful for preventing genuine crime, the everyday citizen today has little control over who can hold or use this information known about them. To realise this fact should be alarming to any person who desires even a small level of personal privacy.

Additionally, in terms of private home surveillance, countless aspects of our lives today can function almost identically to the ‘telescreens’ Orwell presents in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the walls of all homes and workplaces, these devices can simultaneously receive and transmit live footage to those who desire it, and Orwell writes that the people “could be seen as well as heard” and that “There was of course no way of knowing if you were being watched at any given moment.” The idea of being under constant watch was once a terrifying, but seemingly unrealistic concept. Today, this level of invasion is indeed possible. The computers, mobile phones, and ‘Smart TVs’ found in almost every modern home have a danger that is too often unrecognised or conveniently forgotten. This danger is that the microphones and cameras of these devices are able to be accessed by outsiders. At any moment, private conversations and actions can be observed or recorded from outside the home. Moreover, from our refrigerators to our security and heating systems, countless more aspects of our homes are becoming digitalised. Therefore, the ability to maintain total control over the privacy of our actions is rapidly declining, as the potential for this technology to be exploited continues to grow alongside this change. Orwell’s use of the telescreen demonstrates his key warning of the lengths that some will go to in order to gain control and power. The realisation that our lives today could be observed by a similar level of surveillance as in Orwell’s novel should be of great concern, and yet we readily accept our increasingly more convenient lives without considering the hidden dangers they present.

As the parallels continue to become more invasive, the question turns to how we have allowed surveillance to reach this point. A fact that many of us often don’t consider is that as well as our actions, our unspoken, subconscious thought processes are also observable to an uncomfortable degree. The children of Oceanian homes are the mechanism through which Orwell warns us of this ever increasing control and surveillance. As used to ‘spy’ on their parents and ‘report their deviations’, the children in the novel have become “a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.” To learn about how to best control a person, it is necessary to delve into the thoughts from which their actions stem. In our time, it is frequently observed that shortly after completing an online purchase or browsing a website of interest, an advertisement appears soon after with similar products shown. The reality is that nothing online is ever private. In an increasingly digital world it is near impossible to avoid being observed, as computer algorithms observe your online habits and build a profile of you based on every choice you make. What you search for, what you like and dislike, and your reactions to their predictions are all observed so they can monetize you and thus gain more power as an online company. In fact, the Orwellian phrase “Big Brother is watching you” could be modified to “Google is watching you,” or any other online corporation could be inserted into the phrase and it would remain correct. The surveillance of Big Brother and the Inner Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the surveillance carried out by private companies and multinational corporations today are too similar in purpose for us to ignore. The motive to know as much about your thought processes as possible, and use this in order to gain more power for themselves, is stronger than ever and is a facet of our lives that is increasingly more important to recognise.

However much we would like to think otherwise, it is undeniable that the surveillance our lives contain is potentially as invasive as that which Orwell has warned us of. Regardless of whether it is a totalitarian government or a multinational corporation that desires this control, to gain information about a person and utilise it for personal gain is the common purpose to any mechanism of surveillance. The question now turns to why we accept how observable our lives are today, while still remaining wary of the tightly surveilled society in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Despite our denial of the surveillance we are subjected to in everyday life, our concerns surrounding future increases in this form of control remain. Even in recent dystopian texts, the fears of unaccountable surveillance and control are still apparent, such as in the futuristic societies situated around rogue Artificial Intelligence. It therefore appears that instead of taking action to prevent our fears from coming true, we simply modify our concerns over time as what we were once afraid of becomes the reality. Ian Crouch, writer and editor of The New Yorker, comments that in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Everyone simply assumes that they are always being watched, and most no longer know to care.” Any person who cares to pay attention would argue that this point has been reached today.

[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/101884182/big-brother-is-watching-cctv-numbers-up-40-per-cent-in-auckland