Group Double U Topia

While all of the books we have read this semester are very famous and well known, I would say that 1984 is by far the most. 1984 has had an effect on our culture unmatched by almost any other dystopian novel to date, having been bought over 30 million times since its publication. Additionally, the book has seen a large spike in sales in the last few years especially and is now possibly more relevant than ever. I think 1984 reflects our own society much closer than any other dystopian novel, and this makes the book much more impactful to us. There are two major things that i think resonate the most with modern readers of 1984: the surveillance of the population (at least the outer-Party members) and the constant manipulation of information. Firstly, the presence of the term ‘Big Brother’ in modern culture reaches much further beyond the book itself, and this is an example of how 1984 reflects our world; the fear of a totalitarian government watching over your eve...

So far in 1984, the two things that have stood out most to me are how little the proles are monitored compared to those like Winston and how controlling the government in Oceania strives to be, even changing the language so that there are no words left that could incite ideas harmful to Oceania, like “rebellion.” On top of those two factors, as we know from what we’ve read so far (up to chapter VIII), some people in the proles might know the true history of the world and how it has changed since Oceania’s beginning, not the falsified stories that Winston has contributed to himself. Despite all this, the government of Oceania, as mentioned before, still fails to force the same extremes forced onto those near the upper echelon onto the proles. They believe the proles pose absolutely no threat, but even Winston has mentioned how if the proles somehow found motivation to rebel, they could take on Oceania (foreshadowing?). With all these factors considered, it makes sense that someo...

In class today (Monday, April 1st), we discussed the similarities between the world of 1984, and our world in 2019. Several people mentioned that the futuristic tech (Relative to the 1930s) in the book is very similar to our modern day tech. Especially the television screen, which not only broadcasts information but also records information, similar to our computers webcams, and the amazon Alexa.  In the book, this tech is used to supervise people, and discourage them from acting against the state. People know that they are being surveilled 24/7, and this forces obedience in every aspect in life, as they have no privacy to do what they want. While this is not the case in 2019, some people are still being unwillingly recorded. I myself did not know of anything relating to this topic prior to the discussion we had in class on Monday, and I was quite surprised to see how many people covered or knew other people who covered their webcams. It for some reason had never occurred ...