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Why George Orwell wrote 1984

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IainB:
Quite by chance, I was reading this post today in Standpoint - Pareto Humanity - which was suggesting that the Italian School of economics had always been right (i.e., applicable, and theories not disproven), though they weren't popular in economics teaching classes.
The author then refers to Pareto's assertion that the elite was a necessary and natural component of an economic theory where any organisational structure would tend to be structured as a pyramid, with big boxes at the the bottom and successively smaller boxes atop each other to the top.
Rings a bell...

In para 3 he writes:
Yet all the evidence continued to favour the Italian School, especially the history of the Soviet Union, evolving an apparatchiki and a nomenklatura with unprecedentedly structured privileges (like their own exclusive shops) exactly as the theory suggested they would. Orwell's Animal Farm reads pretty naturally as an Italian School allegory about the USSR.
__________________________

--- End quote ---
I must admit that, since reading Animal Farm as a 12 y/o, I had always seen it as an allegory about the USSR, but I did not know at the time, or later, that it was so aligned wit the Italian school of economics.
You learn something new every day - if you're lucky.    :)

J-Mac:
Interesting little post by Cory Doctorow on his Tumblr page. It mentions Orwell in its title though its not related other than being generally "Orwellian".

http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/72759474218/we-are-huxleying-ourselves-into-the-full-orwell

Here's the text, hopefully in good "fair use":


We are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell.

Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that 2014 is the year we lose the Web. The W3C push for DRM in all browsers is going to ensure that all interfaces built in HTML5 (which will be pretty much everything) will be opaque to users, and it will be illegal to report on security flaws in them (because reporting a security flaw in DRM exposes you to risk of prosecution for making a circumvention device), so they will be riddled with holes that creeps, RATters, spooks, authoritarians and crooks will be able to use to take over your computer and fuck you in every possible way.

As near as I can work out, there’s no one poised to do anything about this. Google, Apple and Microsoft have all built proprietary DRM silos that backed the WC3 into accepting standardization work on DRM (and now the W3C have admitted the MPAA as a member - an organization that expressly believes that all technology should be designed for remote, covert control by someone other than its owner, and that it should be illegal to subvert this control).

Once this is standardized at the W3C, all the alternative browsers (eg Firefox) will also have to ship closed, opaque, illegal-to-report-vulnerabilities-in software to support it.

And it’s basically all being driven by Netflix. Everyone in the browser world is convinced that not supporting Netflix will lead to total marginalization, and Netflix demands that computers be designed to keep secrets from, and disobey, their owners (so that you can’t save streams to disk in the clear).

We are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell.

I’m not kidding about any of this. I can’t sleep anymore. I think it may be game over.

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Jim

tomos:
^wow. That kind of deserves a thread of it's own.
Is that true, all that? I mean, I dont suspect him of lying - but is it a realistic analysis?

J-Mac:
Well, the facts mentioned in it are true. As for his analysis, that's an opinion. A somewhat informed one, though it seems a bit extreme. Or is it?

Jim

wraith808:
The facts mentioned in it are *sort of* true.  Not one for draconian DRM measures, but the proposal is to include support for DRM, so third party measures aren't needed.  They won't be required.  If you go to netflix right now, they download a silverlight plugin that does the same thing.  This just does away with the plugin.

--combating FUD where ever it's found.

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