1984

Thoughts on the book? Opinions? Relevancy today? Opinions on complete socialism? Just an Open discussion about a great literary classic.

It's been a long time since I've read it so I don't remember the details of the book too well. It certainly has some relevancy to today with internet spying, but Big Brother is mostly still a sci-fi entity. I think a remember a quote "he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past." This sums up Big Brother and shows some important differences with spying today. First, thanks to almost complete access to everything on the internet (at least in the U.S.), there is zero control over the dissemination of information about the present or the past. Although a lot of people have the wrong information, it's not hard to find the correct info. Second, the internet is only one of many information sources. At one time, newspapers were the main source of information - hence 1st amendment protection for journalism. However, this hasn't always held up, and particularly during WWI many major newspapers were controlled. That would have been closer to a Big Brother state simply because the truth would have been almost impossible to find. Third, currently the information the government obtains by spying is almost exclusively used for anti-terrorism or breaking major laws. Music and movie companies usually have to "police" the net on their own to find people stealing from them. Most minor laws are completely ignored, and unless someone does something stupid no one is going to come looking for them.

(Continued from above post(I kid)) ... they do however have the opportunity to gather all the information they need for forming a list of names relevant to an eventual genocide on the population, no need for due process once you can label people as a "threat to national security", hundreds of legislations that lets the US government do away with the rights of its citizens have been passed over the last few years. this among others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Protection_Act When viewing the US from an external position (i.e. a non-citizen and non-resident) the impression really is that you have a totalitarian government, as an example, you have a 2 party system, with both parties being on what is considered the very very far right in the rest of the western world. Even to the most nationalistic of parties in the danish government you guys are extremely right-side oriented. Supposedly people came to the US seeking religious freedom, yet your government adheres to values laid forth by a single specific religion, how your alarmbells arent ringing on this 24/7 I will never understand. to get back on topic, 1984 awesome book, though I find that "Brave new world" hits closer to home on the issue as far as todays relevance goes atleast.