The Book 1984 is Happening Today

I read George Orwell’s book “1984,” (which was written way back in 1949) many years ago and I am still reflecting on the fact that Orwell’s book seems to be coming true, just 3.4 decades later than 1984.

In the book, the world is always at war. The enemies can change mid-sentence and do during one “Hate Week” lecture. The three main warring powers are Oceana, Eastasia and Eurasia, who were meant to represent America, China and Russia. Here it is 2017 and the three main powers are indeed America, China and Russia. Big Brother (who may be a person or a giant computer system) controls Oceana with thought police and surveillance everywhere. Here in America we have more and more surveillance cameras every day and now while you watch your TV, your TV can be watching you. Your laptop can be watching you. Your cell phone can listen to you and broadcast your location. Your Amazon Echo listens 24/7 even when you forget that fact. Already recorded information from an Amazon Echo was used to convict a man in court. Google home does the same thing. In the book, Newspeak and Doublethink are designed to dumb-down the proles (us) by giving us false and confusing information. Well guess what? It has happened.

Now if I wanted to write a fantasy story about a year in politics and the election of a president, I could not dream up what has actually happened. If I said outside sources hacked into the political party’s servers to change the tide of the election, many would laugh in disbelief. Then if I said internet bots (software robots) from Eurasia using proxy networks based in Bulgaria tracked internet searches and when a person in Oceana did a search for candidate information, the bots added outrageous false stories about a particular candidate, you might say “Impossible!” Years ago I would have said the same, but the impossible has happened; it just took a few years.

Eurasia has done it in Oceana and is currently working feverishly to influence elections in France, Britain, and Germany. It seems that the leader of Eurasia wants to reclaim territories lost after the cold war.

I wish everything I have written here was fantasy; it is fantastic but none of it is fantasy.