Telescreens and technology in 1984
Uploaded by fleebix on May 18, 1999
Through out George Orwells 1984, the use of telescreens is very efficient and effective for the Party. On the other hand it plays a very hard role on our main character, Winston. Through out the novel, he lives in fear of the telescreen and is ultimately taken by the mighty power that is the Party, all in help by the telescreen. The watchful eye of the telescreen is not totally fiction though, in many places it all ready exists.
Winston is a worker who's job is to change history to make sure that its "correct" by the Parties standards. He meets a lovely girl Julia and falls in love. They together try to find life and happiness together, and also they want to find the resistance, or the group of people that they figured existed that will help see the end of the Party and Big Brother himself. In the search for the resistance something goes terribly wrong for them, and there discovered. After weeks or months of endless torture they are slit up, reconditioned and released again as good little Party members. All of this can be traced back to the usage of the telescreen.
"A male security guard uses store surveillance cameras to zoom in on the cleavage of an unsuspecting sales manager" (Hancock 1995, 1) Are Americans willing to let government poke its lens into their business if it means more streets are safe? Can Americans live with the fact of being watched 24 hours a day to make sure there all in line and doing what there supposed to? Its as if Big Brother were here himself.
Technology is improving day by day. As the electronic eyes shrink in size, Big Brother grows even bigger. (Hancock 1995, 1) Cameras can turn into instruments of abuse, even to effectiveness of telescreens that did in Winston and many of his kind. The wired society is a creeping phenomenon because there are no regulations or laws to protect against video surveillance. (Hancock 1995, 2) Our poor character Winston was subject to a harsher type of surveillance than what has been seen, but with no regulation the possibilities are very real that a system that did the work on the people of Big Brother can exist in our society today.
George Orwell amazingly portrayed a anti-utopian world in witch everyone was caught up by the strong possibility that there being watched, and...