By Patricia Garcia-Marquez (undergraduate FIGRI student)
Recently
there’s been a new trend that has gone viral worldwide: the Ice Bucket
Challenge. That’s why, for many days you saw many football players, actors and
actresses take the challenge for a good cause. Like this trend, there have been
many others during the last couple of years all over Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram; in fact even the Arab spring originated through these channels.
Therefore it is impossible to deny the influence that social media, and of
course the Internet, have in our common life: as a way of interaction, to check
the news and even as a work tool.
However, do
we really know who’s watching or monitoring everything we write on Facebook? How many
likes have we given to this site? How many times have we googled this word? Who
do I follow on Twitter? It is undeniable that we are constantly observed by our
governments. In fact, when
Edward Snowden, a former system administrator for the CIA, leaked the documents
that proved the existence of numerous global surveillance programs with the
cooperation of telecommunication companies everyone freaked out. Then, following
this, a common question pops up in my mind: Are we living in George Orwell’s
1984?
For those
who haven’t read the book or watched the movie, 1984 is a political satire of a
totalitarian state “tightly controlled by the ubiquitous Big Brother”[1]. It was written by George Orwell in 1949 and
tells the story of Winston Smith, a low ranking member of the ruling party in
London, who feels frustrated by the domination the party has over people.
For
starters, one of the main topics of the novel is the endless war on a global
state. “In Orwell's book,
there's a global war that has been going on seemingly forever, and as the
book's hero Winston Smith realizes, the enemy keeps changing. One week we're at
war with Eastasia and buddies with Eurasia. The next week, it's just the
opposite.”[2].
Currently there are numerous little wars happening all around the world:
Ukraine vs. Russia, Israel Vs. Palestine, the bombings in Iraq, etc. It seems,
as the book says in one part, that the world powers want to keep the masses in
perpetual fear and anger.
Another thing in common are the telescreens. “In the
novel, nearly all public and private places have large TV screens that
broadcast government propaganda, news and approved entertainment. But they are
also two-way monitors that spy on citizens' private lives.”[3] As I
said before, we are constantly observed through our Facebook and Twitter pages,
and it is easy to know where we are through our mobile phones’ GPS. Right now,
in the UK, there’s one surveillance camera for each eleven people.
Finally, “the fictional, stripped down English
language, used to limit free thought. OMG, RU serious? That's so FUBAR. LMAO.”[4] We are
destroying language little by little.
Conclusively, it is undeniable that what Orwell wrote 60 years ago is a
reality right now. We are being watched and that makes us all suspects, and even
if theoretically that should make us more secure, as we can see, we are ever more
insecure.
[1] We’re living in”1984” today. August
3, 2013. CNN [Online]. Took from http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/03/opinion/beale-1984-now/ the 13 of August 2014.
[2] . Ibid.
[3] Ibíd.
[4] Ibíd.
No comments:
Post a Comment