How Does George Orwell Use Technology In 1984

Everyone has always wondered if people were ever watching them. Our technology today is capable to eavesdrop in on anyone’s conversations even if their phones are turned off. In the novel, “1984”, the party INGSOC uses telescreens to watch over the people and always know what they are up to. This denies the people’s rights and privileges to go about their business as they please. The technology we have today is almost exact to what big brother uses in George Orwell’s novel by taking over the public and private parts of our lives.

One parallel from modern day life to George Orwel’s 1984 is the Telescreens or “big brother is watching you” to the NSA’s surveillance. In the novel the telescreen is a device similar to a TV combined with a security camera. The device is used by the party to monitor the behavior of the inner and outer party members and to insure that they are not plotting against the party. The people of the inner and outer party have very little to no privacy.

Technology is apart of mostly everyone’s life and daily schedule, but often people fail to realize the fact that the government has the ability to monitor everything someone does through these devices. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, a futuristic government spies on their citizens through technology found all throughout their homes. The government used secret microphones, telescreens, and the thought police, a group in charge of finding rebels against the party, in order to monitor what people say and think. There are many examples of this in today’s society: Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung Smart televisions, and social media apps. Amazon’s Alexa and Samsung Smart Televisions are voice recognition systems

In the book, Orwell shows how people are affected by the telescreens when Winston says “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen.” (Orwell ) This suggests that the Party’s surveillance tactics are so advanced that even your thoughts might betray you and get you into trouble. It also shows that people have lost any sense of freedom that they previously had. The implications of this are that the government is forcefully manipulating the people so as to avoid any rebellious behavior but in the process, it has also taken away their privacy. The idea of being heard or watched by something when you think that you have privacy is something that has traveled through time and still exists today. An example in modern American society could be how the brand-new Alexa is said to “record snippets of what you say in the privacy of your home and store it on Amazon servers.” (Tsukayama) This shows how even in modern times that there are means that might be used to spy on people and keep track of what they say and do. This is important because an American society that is said to be democratic and free still has a sense of secrecy and loss of privacy. The people in this society should find it troubling that they don’t have privacy the same way that people in a totalitarian regime had lost their freedom.

The Orwellian government controls many aspects of an individual’s life in the belief that this will create a utopia. Unfortunately, this utopia is only beneficial to the inner party. In the book, the ruling party relies heavily on technology to keep control of the population. This government uses a lot of propaganda, which is fed to the people through this technology. A device called a “telescreen” is used as the mouth of the government. It is implemented not only in public places but in peoples’ homes and it cannot be switched off. It constantly broadcasts only information that the government wants seen. This action is described at the beginning of the novel when we are first introduced to the telescreen:

1984 was written by George Orwell in 1949. Orwell presents a vision of the world and how it would appear in 1984, and this vision is frightening. He predicted that people would have no rights, freedom, or privacy whatsoever. The two main characters are Julia and Winston Smith who live in an authoritarian society and rebel against the lone and omnipotent political party. Winston even wrote “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” (Orwell 18) in his diary. Since the Party and Big Brother, the ruling party dictator, have all authority and literally never

By using the telescreen, a surveillance device located in the homes of all Party members, the Thought Police are able to keep everyone under scrutiny. Winston says, “You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct -in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized” (Orwell, 3). This quotation shows how the intense observation efforts stifle the actions and thoughts of the people in Oceania. An essential component of being human is the ability to communicate freely. Communication has fostered developments in mathematics, literature, science, and every field of learning. The Party deprives their citizens of the human spirit of education by preventing uninhibited conversation. Stephen Ingle’s essay from The Abuse of Power in 1984 reads, “This lack of distinction between a private and public realm is precisely what gives life in Oceania its nightmare quality. Nobody has the recourse to a private world in which he or she may regain self esteem or attempt to control even the smallest part of their destiny: there is no escape from Big Brother” (_______, ____). This excerpt reveals that constant surveillance removes a portion of humanity. Humans need to have havens of refuge where they can lower their defenses against the outside world and have the safety to think and act as they wish. Of course there is the

Telescreens: A wall mounted electronic device that doubles as a television and a surveillance camera, used to monitor the citizens of 1984. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, these telescreens play the most critical part in keeping Oceania’s citizens under control. With telescreens, it’s almost impossible to have any freedom. People are constantly being watched, the slightest act of rebellion can be easily caught, restricting people from being able to truly express themselves. Other techniques the party use may contribute to the control of its citizens, but nothing keeps everybody’s back straight quite like the telescreens of Oceania. Due to the unbelievable amount of telescreens there is no privacy what so ever. Without privacy, no one can think of rebellion, much less act upon those thoughts. Because of this, it is clear that telescreens are the most affective method the party can use to keep the citizens of Oceania under its control.

Through these telescreens, the Thought Police- government force working for Big Brother- arrest citizens who they think might be joining the Brotherhood- the resistance fighting against Big Brother. This type of technology forms the basis for the technology used in the 21st century.

With telescreens monitoring people and thought police to take action. These methods work incredibly well in 1984 because it allows for constant surveillance and allows the Party to keep constant control. In modern society, they use the same concept of constant surveillance, the difference is the medium used for surveillance. This being the internet in modern terms. The internet plays a vital role in modern society, as most of the people's day to day life is dictated by the internet, from their home to the workplace, the internet dictates probably something. This helps achieve constant surveillance as everything that people do on the internet is being recorded in some fashion, either by storing it on a server or keeping it locally. Moreover, there is no reasonable way to escape being monitored through the internet. Even when people are sure that their data is encrypted, it is still being stored somewhere. Comparing with 1984, both have cases of false feelings of security. In 1984 an example of this is would be Mr. Charrington's room with the hidden telescreen, Winston was fooled into believing that the room was not being watched even though a telescreen was there, this feeling lead him renting the room and being caught by the end of it(pg. 101). This theme of surveillance runs rampant in modern society and 1984, through the internet and telescreens (Among other things, telescreens being most noted). But while surveillance is important, the

1984 by George Orwell is a dystopian- an imagined place in which everything is unpleasant or bad- novel that tells of the alarming future. The novel tells of a totalitarian government (called the “Party”) that uses manipulation and intense surveillance to gain control over the minds of its citizens. Orwell writes,"war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength (6)". These three slogans are the core of the Party. Set in Airstip One, which is a province of the superstate Oceania, the protagonist Winston Smith, searches for independence from the social norms. In the beginning of the novel, Orwell describes posters that say “big brother is watching you (3)”. The “big brother” these posters are referring to is a man with a

The Post-World War II era of the United States was filled with terror and paranoia as America fought a long and relentless war against its fundamental opposition to ensure the freedom and rights of the citizens of the world (Pierce). The country was at war with the controlling and manipulative communist party, which reflected the government controlling society in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The “Party” controlled every part of its citizens’ lives, creating a culture with no individuality or uniqueness (Orwell 136). The novel also relates to today’s world because it shows how technology has the power to shift the relationship between an individual and state (“NSA Leak”). Due to the remarkable technological advancements made over the past several

How does technology affect the Party’s ability to control its citizens? In what ways does the Party employ technology throughout the book? They're telescreens represent big brother and people are under the telescreen in the public saying that Outside even tho the shut window-pane the world looked cold. There was wind whirling dust and torn paper that had been torn into spirals and even tho the sun was still shining the sky a harsh blue color , it had seemed to be no colour in anything, there was a house that is a complete opposite Big brother is watching you the voice that had came. There is a part in the book where everything is just the same where and that big brother is watching you.

In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of technology, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. (Orwell 205)

The Party naturalizes the dominance that it has in the way that it constantly conducts surveillance on its members. Through the use of devices called telescreens, the government is able to observe every movement and sound made in the homes of members, on the streets of Oceania, and in the workplace. These telescreens act as modern day webcams and make the government privy to all things going on in the city. The footage transmitted from these screens is monitored by the Thought Police, and it is this government body that determines whether or not one is guilty of a crime. Since the members of the Party are so accustomed to being constantly