1984

The book 1984 tells a story of a world that is undergoing a totalitarian rule, whereby the freedom of human beings is removed and there is injustice present to all by the loss of privacy. It is a world where information can be changed and influenced in order to favour the Great Powers, I believe that this world of 1984 is possible for its looming signs are present worldwide.

I believe that the chances of such a situation occurring depends on the societies capacity to do it, or in other words if the technology to bring about such a situation is available then the chance of this occurring is equally likely. Of course we see in our present day world that technology has taken a huge upheaval. Our technology in terms of privacy is now far developed and in order for us to safely access our valuables we need to undergo many confirmations of our identity. Such are retinal scanners, fingerprints and the use of camera's at most public facilities, information of us has never been so easily accessible. 1984 has a system that is similar to the camera's we have today, they are called the telescreens. These have the ability to monitor all the actions of the members of the Party and can tell whether the member is breaching any of the rules of the house. In almost every room and crevice these systems are present and remove all the existences of privacy from people's lives. In our world this is very much a situation and as our technology can do the job at a more elaborate level it is more of a problem of privacy. In fact the supposed context of the writer of the book was so correct that our modern equipments are far superior in getting the intended information that was partially proposed in 1984. In other words our whole world is just a really big version of a Big Brother House. Thus our modern society is fast becoming the world of 1984 as the technology today is generally similar to it.

The manipulation of information in 1984 is a significant factor of its continual submission of its citizens to the Great Power. Changing information may also lead to the power of changing the past. This is obvious and an intention of Big Brother, his continual success is bleakly based upon his power to lie. There are scenarios we see today that perfectly incorporate to 1984.

'The children overboard crisis'. This is a situation where asylum seekers coming into Australia were refused aid when their boats were sinking. The media had covered the footage of this incident occurring, although there were twists in the story that were in favour of the government or there was incredibly strong bias in the circumstances. Nationwide the people saw refugee children being thrown overboard by their parents; the media headlined this as being a desperate attempt of the adults to get the attention of the Australian Government to receive aid.

But the reason why such an action was undergone was solely intended for the government's sheer willingness to receive the citizens' trust and remain in lead and control. So how is this situation different from the similar actions shown in 1984? The answer is that it is not. The governments have undergone the same actions of changing the truth in order to remain in control just like Big Brothers attempts to change his malevolent past through to morally remain in power.

But in 1984 there is a dilemma in the matter of the truth. Truth is a distorted term that is very multi faceted. In the novel the media is controlled by the Ministry of Truth which is a government owned organisation. They are able to change facts of the past by erasing all and every surviving document of a previous account of something such as a speech