Draft:Orwell's "1984"
[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions by Simon Zass, developed within the context of the Conceptual clarifications about "Utopias and the Information Society", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.
Surveillance, Control, and the Collapse of Autonomy in Orwell’s 1984
George Orwell's 1984 is both a work of dystopian fiction, and a prophetic critique of contemporary information society. This article intends to present an analytical reading of the text by identifying its central features of surveillance, control, and the mobilization of truth. The analytical framework draws upon Shoshana Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism[1] and José María Díaz Nafría’s concept of cybernetic subsidiarity[2] to place Orwell's warnings in the contemporary literature surrounding algorithmic governance, and the monopoly of data. Orwell's thinking undermines techno-utopian depictions of transparency and democratisation. 1984 presents a world unchanged: information is controlled, monopolised, and an instrument of power. The article follows the trajectory of this controlling structure against modern developments in predictive policing, platform capitalism and behavioural optimisation and argues that the role of new architecture in the digital age is predictive of the ethical risks of Orwell's warning.
Historical Background
Orwell’s Political Context
George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair) was a child of the early twentieth century born in India. He wrote 1984 in the late forties of a world ravaged by war, and political extremism. His experiences of the Spanish Civil War, where he witnessed the brutality of authoritarian factions on both sides, were integral to his political framing of the world we live in.[3] Through these experiences, Orwell became deeply sceptical of the centralised power leveraged by fascists, communists, and many forms of authority witnessed in his own life. His scepticism towards totalitarianism and authoritarianism is permeable throughout much of Orwell's later works. Not only was the allegorical critique of the Soviet Union realised through Animal Farm (1945) but Orwell took this critique to a dystopian reality with 1984. Orwell published 1984 in 1949 at a time when the increase of Cold War tensions, mass propaganda and state surveillance was becoming more evident. In writing 1984 Orwell extrapolated from contemporary authoritarian, and totalitarian practices of the time to create a society where the levers of power were perfected, and wielded and internalised by society and its citizens. Orwell presented not merely a political warning in 1984, but a challenge to the Enlightenment ideals of truth, autonomy and rationality.
Totalitarianism and the Mid-20th Century Ideological Wars
The ideological wars of the mid-twentieth century were a global clash between liberal democracies, fascist regimes, and communistic totalitarian states. Thinkers like Hannah Arendt defined totalitarianism not only in terms of power and control, but as a mode that seeks to rewrite reality as well.[4] George Orwell's Party in 1984 emerges from, opponents of totalitarianism wrestled against an ideological force that sought to rewrite history, language, and thought. Totalitarianism attempted to redefine reality itself by substituting a fictitious total theory of history to replace empirical truth.
The powerful slogan that best expresses this understanding in 1984 is: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." The imposition of this ideological challenge is an issue of state design and not merely a matter of individual memory. Historical manipulation places history in the hands of those in power, politics and history now a process that feeds a deformed reflection of a required truth that the Party is power.
Totalitarian Aesthetics and the Erasure of the Individual
Orwell criticizes not only the power a totalitarian regime exerts on ideological reprogramming, but the model for aesthetics that totalitarianism encounters with each ideological foe through through disciplines of aesthetics that relies more on the experience of desacralized humanism. The attempt at creating uniformity in the aesthetic design through uniforms, replicated slogans, and, ritualized hatred leaves an askew impression of humanity. The emotional training of indoctrination involves the application of states of collective ongoing emotional states of repetition to turn fear and frustration to loyalty by using group practices (The Two Minutes Hate).
What Orwell is describing in 1984, is not that citizens are watched, they are shaped. The totalitarian regime has removed their language is reduced to "Newspeak," their history has been examined, erased, and invented, their everyday desires have been programmed and placed back in to the collective hive: The goal of the Party was not simply obedience, but love. The annihilation of resistance at its root is, love for Big Brother. The triumph of binding the collapse of individualism to the soul of the individual.
The Utopia Regarding the Information Society
Big Brother and the Dream of Total Social Order
At the core of Orwell's dystopia, is an inchoate utopia: a complete abolishment of all disorder, ambiguity, and unpredictability. The Party, purported to represent Big Brother’s symbolic authority offers full and equal stability and unity. This develops in societies that locate and desire to govern through exactitude, predictability, and singularity in their representation in information societies.
José María Díaz Nafría examined the nature of a "utopia of the information society" to identify an utopia of social order in the sense that society might be envisioned when it is fully computable, knowable, and, governed by information systems.[5] In 1984, this is realized through a highly organized state apparatus that not only keeps order, but provides an engineered atmosphere via language, time and emotion.
The peace of Oceania is not the consensus, nor justice, it is the seamless combination of complete surveillance, propaganda, and fear. This reveals the grotesque inversion of the principle of Enlightenment; knowledge liberates. Here knowledge oppresses.
The Illusion of Choice and Predictive Governance
In 1984, the individual has no choice. The ways it’s done, however, resonate with contemporary trends of predictive governance and behavioral optimization. The Thought Police act on potential, instead of action. They act before disobedience happens based on a smirk, a speech act, or a transgression against being “normal.”
This anticipates debates about predictive policing and algorithmic selection that stipulate optimized outcomes based on human minimization and system maximization[6] just as Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism” maps the ways that contemporary platforms predict user behavior to guide, monetize, or avert decisions.
The outcome, in the novel and in today’s contexts, is the same: algorithmic certainty replaces autonomy. Free will becomes something to be surveilled rather than an intrinsic right.
Newspeak and the Engineered Mind
Orwell's Newspeak is not just a fictional language; it is a recipe for cognitive constraint. It systematically limits the range of possible thought by imposing constraints on the range of possible expression. In doing so, the Party produces a citizenry that is not simply censored; they are conceptually incapable of dissent. This resonates with the current concerns regarding algorithmic filtering and platform curation. By formatting the information ecology, these systems format the epistemic space by influencing what users can conceive as thinkable, timely, or true. The utopia of all optimization becomes a dystopia of responsible semantics, and in either, the ability to challenge the system is systematically voided.
Harmony Through Submission: Love as Domination
Orwell's utopian critique is made particularly chilling by the requirement that the Party does not just want obedience but, as we saw, affective fidelity. That transformation for Winston Smith was not resignation but love for Big Brother. It captures a power that is more concerned with psychological closure than political stability. Relative to our situation today, there is an echo within the normalization of market-based data extraction from gamified trust, emotional AI, and corporate "care". Platforms make their emotional connections in order to leverage for greater engagement and user loyalty, turning their intimate experience into behavioral surplus. As Díaz Nafría notes, their informational utopia masks a deeper asymmetry in control and agency.[7]
Dystopical Aspects of Information Control
Surveillance and the Cybernetic Panopticon
Orwell's vision of omnipresent recognition is that of Big Brother, and the ever-staring telescreens that stare and listen to citizens every day, and every night. Not only does this conditions for physical submission, but also becomes a form of self-discipline, where the recognition, or sensation of being recognized, transforms into a self-discipline through anticipatory compliance.
This way of ruling is consistent with that described by Díaz Nafría as a "cybernetic panopticon" - a distributed, anticipatory form of control that operationalizes observation as a function of communication itself.[8] Where Bentham's panopticon relies upon the concept of being seen, Orwell's has the end-game of being watched as constant and complete, and therefore, no coercion is required.
The principle endures in the digital realm, wherein sensors and location and behavior are being documented about users, and simply put, users are carrying out their own telescreens in the form of smartphones recording location, preferences, and social situations, and to layered sources, sometimes without even opting-in to tracking.
Emotional Engineering and Ritualized Hatred
The Two Minutes Hate was an immense opportunity for citizens to release violent and explosive emotional volatility against the enemies of the Party. This act was more than emotional regulation, and most significantly, the aspect of politically bonding ritual. For instance, this situation where Orwell would have us believe that totalitarian organizations such as the Party, don't just suppress emotion, but use it as a channel to stabilize total loyalty. One can likewise situate emotional engineering in the present, where the algorithms and economics that create outrage are a form of amplification in social networks, of which anger and fear might lead to (un)attention. As Zuboff noted, emotional volatility is equilibrating as a commodity; always harvesting, measuring, and selling to other people.[9] Just as the Party managed hate for total control, the digital surveillance of today appears to commoditize, or monetize affect, or as a form of continuity in the platform economy.
Truth Rewritten: Memory Holes and Epistemic Authority
Don't forget that possibly the most astonishing place for dystopia in 1984 is the Party's ability to alter the past. Processes of destruction," for example memory hole," shall be instigated by the Party that will guarantee that the records of history shall be erased or changed to keep the political operation, at the moment of ascertainment, and introduce citizens to either take it as truth, although that truth is a contradiction from previous versions of truth or reality.
This specific flavor of epistemic authority may also speak to the issue of contemporary confusion about disinformation, the threats of deepfakes, and enough in-particular algorithmically jostled historical memory. Both Díaz Nafría and Zuboff know that contemporary information architectures not only aggregate human data, but also have the capacity to shape, or syntax the re-thinking, re-positioning, and re-contextualizing of human data ([10]; [11]). It is similar once again, to 1984 and the platforming systems, where truth becomes conditioned, and process-programable.
Anti-Intellectualism and Mass Distraction
Orwell's Party wants the least sophisticated intellectual structure, and for this will subsidize the proletariat "proles," through pornography, meaningless entertainment, and put in place normalized stories. The diversion from deep and critical thought embraces an entire critique of the "attention economy," which defines a sensibility of superficial participation rewarded and sustained by algorithmic networks, while deeper engaged thought is discouraged. Marshall McLuhan's insight regarding media being extensions of our perceptual habits is another way to articulate this reality.[12] Orwell in 1984 group creates tautologies for conformity through intellectual deprivation, now the cycle/digital systems (algorithm)- provides conventional gratification out of reflexive thought in the activity of entertainment/knowledge.
Love as Control: The Destruction of Resistance
Orwell's last stage does not only rely on submission based on power. Winston's emotional ascent, "I love Big Brother," is a signal of total disintegration of personal resistance, an anchor of abject domination - a reprogramming of desire. Terrifying logic exists in existing systems, such as surveillance marketed as a service, or more explicitly engineered emotional attachments to create greater company dependence. Emotional AI, represented in assistant bots and comment categories of identity, mimic intimacy all the while continuing to farms without consequence. As Zuboff and Díaz Nafría highlighted, these systems could take our emotional vulnerability as data and cast it as predictive control.
Implications for the Present Information Society
From Telescreens to Smartphones: The Continuity of Surveillance
The tele-screens lived as hyperbole for lifestyle categories as right as transmitters and recorders, whereas living today through our smartphones, smart speakers/other ecologies and the same manner of producing content and extracting user generated data. Whereas in 1984 surveillanced was based upon threat and coercive force; today the very convenience displaces surveillance from violent domination, with the user themselves being the commodity. As Díaz Nafría stated, contemporary societies are governed through an interplay of coercive institutions and multiple layers of control - societies are governed through multiple ([in mechanically intentional ways], cybernetic feedback systems - of which we are all in being surveilled, profiled, and consequentially acted upon) ([13]). The contemporaneous moment re-colours moves from forced transparency to voluntary revelation peractivity - Not the technology of control but rather the mechanisms of subjugation remain.
Behavioral Surplus and Predictive Authority
Zuboff discusses the "behavioural surplus" that is to say data extracted over and above what is necessary to provide the new service, that data that enables the training of predictive models, actions wanted for future aims.[14] In Orwell's time, distort the representation of truth is dominance to solidify current power; in our time, predictions representations for the future, representation and actions by altering with what users see, buy, believe, and keep wanting.
The pre-emptive logic dissipates the preconditions of free will. As with the Thought Police, contemporary systems are attempting to correct you in mid-flight of deviation prior to a definite act - that Orwell represented through terror, that platform capitalism achieves through frictionless design/nudging through behaviours.
Data Colonialism and the Informational Self
Contemporary thinkers like Couldry and Mejias argue that we are witnessing a new form of colonialism in that human life becomes the raw material for extractive purposes. Data colonialism turns embodied human experience into capital, which parallels Orwell’s vision of a world that trades in memory and love for the purposes of the system. In Twenty Eighty-Four, the Party colonizes time and thought, whereas in today's society, we witness the colonization of attention, emotion, and intention by platforms. According to Díaz Nafría, the informal systems of governance of the platform economy more easily avoid established institutions while being more efficient than traditional forms of governance and yet less ethical.[15]
Algorithmic Personhood and the Loss of Moral Agency
As more decisions are offloaded to algorithms, people are increasingly distanced from the consequences of their actions. Orwell's prescient warning regarding the loss of moral selfhood takes on new significance. In Twenty Eighty-Four, Winston loses not only his beliefs, but his ability to develop moral judgments that exercise a grip on right and wrong. This is an unsettling parallel to modern concerns about the abrogation of responsibility in systems designed to better "know" than the person for whom they are designed. In the face of algorithms directing behavior through recommendations, the capacity to make ethical choices breaks down. Autonomy becomes an encumbrance when speed and convenience are prized above deep reflection.
Post-Truth Politics and the Programmability of Reality
Orwell's doublethink—a belief in two incompatible ideas simultaneously—has acquired significant currency in an era of misinformation and algorithmic filtering. Platforms are increasingly defining reality not on some empirical set of verified truths, but on behavioral patterns. With personalized interfaces, black-boxed curation, and politically segregated content ecosystems, users arrive at fragmented epistemological positions. "2 + 2 = 5" is no longer a Party slogan; it is an allegory for a world in which truth is negotiated by virtue of alignment with the interests of power or the profit motive. If Zuboff is correct, then the architecture of surveillance capitalism was designed to provoke action—a concept susceptible to manipulation—not enlightenment or transparency.
References
- ↑ Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). Cyber-subsidiarity: Toward a global sustainable information society. In E. G. Carayannis et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense (pp. 1–12). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06091-0_39-1
- ↑ Orwell, G. (2000). Homage to Catalonia. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1938)
- ↑ Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Schocken Books.
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). eSubsidiarity: An ethical approach for living in complexity. In The Future Information Society (pp. 59–79). Springer.
- ↑ Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). Cyber-subsidiarity: Toward a global sustainable information society. In E. G. Carayannis et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense (pp. 1–12). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06091-0_39-1
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). Cyber-subsidiarity: Toward a global sustainable information society. In E. G. Carayannis et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense (pp. 1–12). Springer.
- ↑ Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). eSubsidiarity: An ethical approach for living in complexity. In The Future Information Society (pp. 59–79). Springer.
- ↑ Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89.
- ↑ McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press.
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). Cyber-subsidiarity: Toward a global sustainable information society. In E. G. Carayannis et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense (pp. 1–12). Springer.
- ↑ Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
- ↑ Díaz Nafría, J. M. (2017). eSubsidiarity: An ethical approach for living in complexity. In The Future Information Society (pp. 59–79). Springer.