1984 by George Orwell
Review
This book is so relevant in 2019 I find it hard to believe it was published in 1949. There are many direct parallels in this story to the present that the story gives a bigger perspective on what is going on right now. Of course the “speakwrite” translates perfectly to our internet connected phones as spying device and propaganda outlet, but even the “alterable history” described in the book maps perfectly on the recent tendency to depend on online services that govern our historical archives of media (netflix for video, spotify for audio, ebookstores for books). Echo chambers on social media and youtube already resemble the way outer partymembers are indoctrinated by those companies controlling the media. Super interesting and read, and an important testament to fighting for privacy and independant thinking.
1984
Chapter 5
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Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs—”
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The phrase ‘our new, happy life’ recurred several times.
Chapter 9
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The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.
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the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism
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The so-called ‘abolition of private property’
Chapter 3
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Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to forties!” Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared. “Arms bending and stretching!” she rapped out. “Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three four! One two, three, four!…”
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r several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one.
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all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: