-Caveat Lector-
From: Dan S <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.washtimes.com/culture/culture1.html
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Some futurists say beware, Orwell's future is at hand
By David Goodman
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
George Orwell once said he meant for his most ambitious and powerful
novel, "1984," to serve as a warning against the trends
toward a totalitarian society.
With this week marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of
"1984," futurists are asking precisely how far society has
come toward Orwell's vision of a future when a "Big Brother" government
is always watching.
"Orwell's future is much closer than most people think," says David
Ross, a journalist and author of "The Argus Gambit," a
science fiction book he calls "a disquieting view of the future."
Orwell's vision in "1984," Mr. Ross says, "can be a book of
revelation about how scary things could become during the third
millennium."
Mr. Ross has worked with an Orwell scholar to count 137 predictions
or indicators of the "total surveillance future"
envisioned in "1984." Of those 137 indicators, more than 100 have been
fulfilled, Mr. Ross says.
Lowell Ponte, host of a show on the Talkradio Network, says of the
Orwellian trends in society: "Were Orwell alive today,
and wrote a '1984 Revisited,' he'd warn that many of his nightmare
visions are becoming real -- more real than most people
realize."
For example, in "1984" three great superpowers -- North America,
Europe and China -- rule the world. In each country,
the central government maintains strict control over members of the only
political party, monitoring their every thought and
action through surveillance and computer technologies.
One development that Orwell didn't predict is the widespread use of
computers, although computers now provide many of
the technologies that Mr. Ross says are capable of eroding privacy and
personal freedoms.
"Based on this list of surveillance and computer technologies,
Orwell's future has largely become fact," Mr. Ross says. "The
more I read from the list, and the more snooping I observe into personal
affairs, and how the government even wants to read
our e-mail" -- a reference to legislative battles over e-mail encryption
technology --"the more I see '1984' as an accurate
revelation about the future."
Many devices Orwell envisioned, such as "speakwrite" to convert the
spoken words into print, are now a word-processing
reality. Others, like prose-writing machines, are software on shelves in
computer stores. Still other devices, such as television
surveillance, are increasingly being used by police on urban streets
where "Big Brother" is always watching.
Many of the military technologies predicted in "1984" have also
become reality, Mr. Ross says.
"Not one of Orwell's hypothetical weapons of mass destruction is
beyond the reach of today's technology," writes Edward
Cornish of the Bethesda, Md.-based World Future Society. The weaponry in
Orwell's novel no longer reads like science fiction
fantasy.
Orwell wrote of "lenses in space to focus the sun's rays" -- which
Mr. Ross compares to the gigantic lasers studied for use in
the Strategic Defense Initiative. Orwell's "planes independent of Earth"
-- a space shuttle docking with a space station, Mr.
Ross says.
And Mr. Ross sees the "floating fortresses to guard sea lanes" in
"1984" as aircraft carrier battle groups deployed offshore in
the Mediterranean Sea or the Persian Gulf depending on whether
Yugoslavia or Iraq is the target.
The demonization of such foreign leaders as Iraq's Saddam Hussein
and Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic is reminiscent of
the "two-minute hates" in Orwell's vision of the future, Mr. Ross says.
"The hates, by the way, in '1984,' are organized by government to
demonstrate citizen solidarity during a perpetual war," he
says. "News shows broadcast scenes of rape, looting and slaughter to
justify the nation perpetually being at war against its
enemies.
"This sounds like the shows on television today where the police
fight drug criminals in the interminable drug 'war' now in its
27th year," Mr. Ross adds.
With so much of the technology needed to produce the world of
"1984" already a reality, Orwell's "dystopia" -- a negative
utopia --could be a possibility, says Mr. Ross.
"For the predictions actually to add up to the negative world," he
says, "all that must happen is that governments in the West
undergo some sudden traumatic change, a series of events within a short
period of time causing an unprecedented loss of
optimism for the future."
Some futurists think Mr. Ross is too negative. Peter Huber, in a
popular 1994 book, "Orwell's Revenge," argued that Orwell
was wrong in his view of surveillance and computer devices necessarily
being negative. Orwell may have been right in the details
of his future, Mr. Huber said, but he was wrong in how the technology
would be put to use. According to Mr. Huber, personal
computers in private hands impart freedom -- even to overthrow "Big
Brother."
But Charles Cameron, senior analyst at the Arlington Institute,
disagrees.
"We who are living through Orwell's nightmare seem to see it as a
dream come true," Mr. Cameron says. "But it is neither
dream nor nightmare." He says the role of "1984" was "to wake up the
human race to its power to shape or destroy its own
destiny."
Whether "1984" is a set of accurate predictions, or merely a
warning about how negative the future could be, Orwell's book
remains an influential message.
"He made us think," says Marvin Cetron, president of Forecasting
International in Falls Church, Va.
Clement Bezold of the Institute for Alternative Futures observes,
"The prospects for Big Brother are immense when
government and marketing companies attempt to run our lives."
"What we citizens must do," Mr. Ross says, "is to devise a plan to
bypass government and corporations reassuring us that
Orwell was wrong in his scenario.
"By the Internet and home phone lines, citizens themselves must
identify threats posed by technology in the wrong hands," he
says, suggesting that a "1984" scenario may be the result of the
year-2000 computer problem. "Then everyone, including the
futurists, must take Orwell dead seriously before the crisis on Jan. 1,
2000, arrives, and the government blinks or implements."
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