Is He Really Watching?
In a modern society ruled by technology, it seems that presence of it is inevitable and there is no escape to it. Technology can be useful for progressing in the medical field, communicating with someone across the globe almost in an instant, or even putting someone on another planet to conduct research. Disastrously, technology can also be used for mass destruction, elimination, and for other cruel reasons. Over the past century, several cases of cruel technological uses have been recorded. Adolf Hitler used the idea of mass media, which was a fairly new idea, to persuade the German and Austrian population into believing his ideas and beliefs. A similar case is found in the totalitarian dictatorship world that was written by George Orwell in 1984. In 1984, a mythical figure, known as Big Brother, controls the lives of all through technological means and fear. With the presence of telescreens and sensitive microphones, people do not have the freedom and the privacy to think for themselves. In the modern post 9/11 era, the National Security Agency is using technological means, such as phone calls and search engines, to file and keep track of anything and everything one says. The NSA has made claims that people are under surveillance for the sole purpose of security and safety. In both Big Brother’s society and in the post 9/11 society, technology is used to track people and to obliterate privacy and private thought. The book may have served an example of why privacy may be dangerous to the modern world. Whether Orwell wrote is as a warning or for fictional purposes, his vision has played out in the United States and in other first world countries.
In the fictional novel, 1984, George Orwell depicts a society called Oceania. His focus is on a man named Winston Smith and his daily troubles in the dictatorship of Oceania. In this totalitarian society, privacy and freedom is obliterated from the lives of people. No one can think or act for...